Queen of Hearts
by IronyRocks
Summary: Post-ep 2.10: Before the Dawn. Dick has been hiding something for months and it's time Barbara finds out what it is. For a person used to secrets, her world is about to be turned upside down by the revelation of one more. (Babs/Dick)
1. Chapter 1

**Rating**: Mature

**Relationships**:Barbara Gordon/Dick Grayson, Artemis Crock/Wally West.

**Characters**: Barbara Gordon, Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown, Wally West, M'gann M'orzz, Conner Kent, Aqualad, Alfred Pennyworth, The Joker, Jim Gordon.

**Summary:** Post-ep 2.10: _Before the Dawn_. Dick has been hiding something for months and it's time Barbara finds out what it is. For a person used to secrets, her world is about to be turned upside down by the revelation of one more.

* * *

Barbara stays silent through most of the debriefing. She watches Dick lead from the far edge of the room, and his body looks stiff and at attention, muscles coiled tight like he's suddenly _not _the most limber person she's ever known in her entire life. The familiar body-language reads defensive and severe, and it's one she recognizes from all those fights with Batman. But Batman isn't here; he's several lightyears away serving some sort of imagined penance for sixteen hours of missing time, and she'd call Dick on it but the entire team is watching and this isn't the time to be having those sorts of conversations. The entire meeting unfolds with this quiet sense of ill-ease in the pit of her stomach. She feels like she's missing something. A clue, an untold side to the story, a missing piece of the puzzle. No one on the mission got themselves killed, no one else was captured, and they've uncovered the Light's new ally. It's been a successful mission, all-in-all.

Why does it feel like an abject failure, then?

Barely anyone comments when Beast Boy narrates how M'gann defeated Aqualad, while the woman in question, the one that actually _did_ the conquering, just sits there. There's bleak avoidance buried in her gaze, and at first Barbara assumes its guilt that's driving M'gann's reclusive behavior, guilt at defeating a former friend, but there's something larger, darker, almost like… _shame._

"All right," Dick says, avoiding everyone's gaze. "That's it for tonight. Everyone… good job."

The words feel hollow and empty for a victory call.

* * *

Later that night, she follows Dick and Tim back to Wayne Manor and helps Tim put his stuff away in the Batcave. (They'd been wearing their civilian clothes the entire mission, a tactic that might prove troublesome because already one of the blonde-haired abductees has started asking questions. Tim has volunteered to handle it.) She helps Tim clean up the grappling hooks and lay away the detonator charges they'd brought along on the mission. He's talkative as usual, but Barbara finds it difficult to keep up with the conversation because she's half-preoccupied. Dick is even moreso. So it isn't surprising when Tim begs off halfway to sunrise, leaving both Barbara and Dick in the middle of the large cavern alone.

Dick seats himself in front of the three largest flat-screen monitors, digging through the Wayne database as he tries in futility to unravel information about the Reach. He hasn't said a word in over an hour and though she's long used to Bruce's monotonous research sessions, it's just wrong on Dick. She can hear the bats in the distance. It's the only noise for a long time, before Barbara finally treads forward and drops a hand onto his shoulder. Dick stiffens, barely a half-inch, but she feels it resonate up her arm and through her whole body the same as if he'd flinched away from her touch by yanking back his arm. She wonders if he'd been so drawn into his own little world that he'd forgotten she'd been there at all, but Dick is always mindful of his surroundings.

"You all right?" she asks.

He shrugs it off. "Yeah." And quickly redirects. "Check out these figures. The Reach can hold over two thousand of their kind on each ship. We know of one officially hovering over the UN. Who knows how many more they're hiding on Earth?"

No one ever got on this team by being anything less than bold, so she decides to mention the topic that Dick is trying desperately to avoid. "I'm sorry. About Aqualad."

He tenses again. "It was… bound to happen."

His voice is crisp, firm – almost taut with strain and yet more than little resigned. How he can convey so many conflicting emotions with a single sentence, she'll never know, but Dick has always been a walking contradiction.

"I know this must be hard for you," she goes on to say, "But there's nothing you could have done. Aqualad picked his side. What happened to him tonight wasn't your fault—"

He jerks up from the chair. Barbara falls back a step or two, watching him as he unleashes some storage of energy by pacing to the back wall. His entire body is radiating restrained emotions, especially something akin to guilt, and she wants to tell him that everything will be okay, but that's a lie neither of them believe in anymore – not blindly, anyway.

Batman never raised children to believe in fairytales.

"Aqualad did this," she repeats, stubbornly. He needs to hear this before that insufferably big savior complex he inherited from Bruce engulfs accountability for too many things. "This isn't your fault, Dick."

It's the wrong thing to say, apparently.

His fingers curl in an angry fist, but she's always known Dick to be restrained and controlled. _Traught_. She's only seen him let loose a few times before – just once, really, when Jason… when _that _happened, so she isn't prepared for when Dick lets go this time. He smashes a hand through a corner of a brick wall. Barbara flinches out of instinct. The broken shards of brick sink beneath the rushing pool of water below, and the cavern suddenly seems empty again, painfully silent. Dick lets his hand drop at his side, busted skin and blood already running down his knuckles. His breathing sounds choked.

"This wasn't how it was supposed to go," Dick says, so softly that she isn't sure he meant for her to hear it.

The words feel disjointed to her.

To be honest, she hadn't known Aqualad that well. By the time she'd joined the team, Aqualad had already moved up the ranks and she rarely had reason to join him on missions. He spent a lot of months in Atlantis, too. She knew Dick's friendship with him had been one forged early on in their youth, one of shared burdens of command when the team was just a handful of sidekicks still earning trust and independence from all the adults. That type of bond… it isn't a trivial thing, even when broken.

Still, she feels an undercurrent of hidden meaning, of unspoken truths. It gnaws at Barbara in the silent wake.

Finally, after beats of silence have spooled out between them like yards of yarn come undone, she approaches him as calm as she can. Though, inside, she feels like her stomach is made up of worms and grief and anger and confusion, and mostly she just hates seeing people she loves in pain. She turns Dick around and without a word or hesitation pulls him to her. At first, it's literally the most awkward hug of her entire life because he just stands there, as firm and severe as he's been all day, and she thinks it's weird that she's only ever been this close to him when they're sparring or in the aftermath of a disaster. Then his rigid posture starts to melt a little, his shoulders softening before crumbling completely. His arms suddenly go from limp to vice-like around her torso, and she feels him exhale out over the spot where her shoulder meets her neck. It's suddenly, desperately, _painfully _intimate.

They stay like that for a long time. She doesn't know how long.

When she pulls back, she keeps her voice soft but firm, "Dick, talk to me. You don't have to carry this all by yourself, y'know?"

"There's nothing to talk about, Barbara. I just…" he sighs, heavily, then puts a few feet in between them again, regaining his equilibrium with every step he takes. "I just need some time to myself."

He's been doing that more and more, lately.

They've never been "best buddies." Not officially, anyway, because he has Wally for that. They're not partners either, because mostly Dick's partner has always been _Batman,_ even after going their separate ways. They've never been anything close to boyfriend and girlfriend, despite what the rumor mill and nearly half of their close friends allege (and the other half suspect). They've never even acknowledged out loud what sort of relationship they have with one another. It's just… _there._ She's Barbara and he's Dick, or he's Nightwing and she's Batgirl. At some point, without her even realizing it, they became a pair. A pair of _what_, exactly, she doesn't know, but one thing's for certain: she knows Dick Grayson in a way that no one else does.

And she knows when he doesn't want to be pushed.

Problem is, Barbara's never been one to let others set her limits.

* * *

"Hey, kiddo," her dad greets with a warm smile. She can smell tobacco in the air, but she saves the lecture for another day. "You're home late. Busy night?"

"Yeah, sorry. Got caught up studying with Dick."

There's a flash of disbelief that flitters across his face, but it leaves quickly. Barbara sometimes suspects her dad's onto her game, that she spends her nights playing vigilante with his oldest friend and two billionaire wards, but mostly Barbara suspects her father is just getting wary of her "studying" with boys until all hours of the night. Especially Dick Grayson. Tonight, though, the sense of incredulity is tainted when he gets a good look at her. He's never been the best at reading her when she doesn't want to be read, but tonight something must show up anyway because his eyes darken and his voice goes that gentle soft rumble she used to hear late at night whenever he checked in on her before turning into bed. (On those nights he managed to make it home, anyway.)

"What is it, Barbara?"

She shakes her head and smiles. "Nothing, Dad. It's just…"

"Just what?"

She's just tired of people closing themselves off, is all. It's a hypocritical stance to be taking in front of her father, though. Barbara doesn't have the gall or the self-delusional conviction to voice it. At least not tonight, apparently. Instead, picking her way across the living room, she tosses a smile at her father, half full of bravado and the other half empty charm. "Just tired, is all," she says, and pivots to climb the stairs. "Good night!"

She hears his answering call as the door to her room shuts, and Barbara sags against the wooden frame.

God, she's tired.

* * *

They have a mission the next week in Bialya, which Dick claims is a complete coincidence, but Wally has since rejoined the team and asserts the exact opposite. That this is a kind of curse, a jinx, a place for fixed bad luck. Barbara stays out of it, mostly because the tension between Dick and Wally has nothing to do with the place of their new mission. She tells others to mind their own business as the team flies across the globe to where the Reach have now joined Brain in experimenting on humans.

The enemy camp is in the middle of the desert, and Barbara splits off into teams of four with M'gann, Connor and Beast Boy. It's mostly recon, and the group maintains radio silence the entire time. Even chatter over the psychic bond is subdued, so when the team splinters off into small pairs, Barbara is almost eager at the chance to step away from the tension.

Barbara doesn't step away far enough, though, because she's still within hearing when M'gann starts to plea, "Connor, we'll figure this out. I'll fix what happened with him. I promise!"

Connor exchanges a pained sort of look with her, and Barbara and Beast Boy turn and look away because – yeah, it's none of their business. But later on, when she overhears Dick say something eerily similar to Wally (_"We'll fix this! I'm telling you, we can still do this."_), Barbara isn't so sure she can afford to be this willfully ignorant to whatever it is that's so very, very broken.

* * *

Over the next few weeks, she starts to suspect that in their routine of worrying about the apocalypse, she and Dick have completely missed something rather obvious. Tim has a girlfriend. Or at least, she suspects he does because he disappears at random times of the day and only returns hours later with a pleased smile on his face. She knows he isn't spending that time with any of their teammates, and he's unusually closed off about the topic when pressed. Mostly, Barbara is of the mind that he's a little young to have a girlfriend. (Dick disagrees, but of course as the resident Casanova, he _would_.)

It's only a little while later that they find out the girl in question is one of the abductees they rescued from their raid on Aqualad's ship. "Stephanie Brown," she recognizes easily enough. Anyone that's seen Barbara's unmasked face during a mission is on a very short list. "What are you thinking, Tim?" she demands.

"It's not as bad as you think," Tim defends himself. "She spotted you a while back coming out of the Gotham Police Station with your father. She started asking questions. I intervened, and she… she isn't going to be a problem, Barbara. I promise."

"Listen, your girlfriend—"

"Friend!" Tim stresses, high-pitched and red-faced, not for the first time. "She's just my _friend_!"

"Yeah, whatever," she exchanges an eye roll with Dick over this, getting a thrill at finally being on the other end of that particular brand of incredulity. "She knows about our secret identities. I don't have to tell you that it's trouble."

"She won't be any trouble," he insists. "I promise."

* * *

Weeks later, formal introductions are being made to Alfred, which – just, is unofficially the seal of approval on a relationship that Barbara can already see will spell disaster. She's still holding her judgment on Stephanie, but Barbara has to admit the younger girl has some spirit and spunk. A little too much, perhaps.

Barbara exchanges a sour look with Dick, though. "You realize Bruce is going to kill us, right?" she whispers to him. "He's gone for a few months and a fourteen-year-old girl discovers our secret identities. I plan on laying this all at your feet."

"What?" Dick says, incredulous. "How is any of this my fault?"

She shrugs. "I'm sure I can think of something clever."

"Oh, ha ha. Don't even joke about that. Bruce doesn't have a sense of humor. Besides, she's just Tim's friend – girlfriend – whatever. She's not joining the family or anything."

* * *

Barbara isn't the mistrustful type.

Of the Batclan family, in fact, she's often wondered if somehow she has the least bit of emotional trauma to deal with, because there is no family tragedy that drove her into this life. She isn't an orphan, and while her father slaves away at a job that leaves such certainties as far off from given as can be, she grew up without the experience of visiting graves.

She is no longer that naïve thanks to the Joker.

Jason's grave is at the far end of the Wayne Cemetery. She doesn't visit it often, mostly because the short journey across the grounds feels like a march to war. But ever since Mount Justice was destroyed, there's been a selection of different areas for team mission debriefs. Tonight, it's at Wayne Manor. She sees Impulse visit Jason's grave, and the abrupt reminder of how long it's been since she'd gone by with roses makes Barbara feel miserably guilty.

The mission overview doesn't take long, and just before they set out on the bioship, Barbara steals a few minutes to visit the grave.

Dick finds her like that, five minutes later. "Barbara," he calls, softly.

"Just give me a few moments," she insists.

He comes to stand beside her, and for a long while neither of them interrupt the silence despite the fact that the clock is ticking down on getting their next mission started.

"He was so young," she says, just to break the awful hush.

Dick doesn't respond – he _never _responds to anything about Jason. Like it's too painful to even utter his name.

She has an epiphany in that long, deafening span of silence that follows. Jason's death was the moment Dick had started to pull away, the moment he had started to keep secrets from her. It's a soft painful sort of revelation, like a piece of the puzzle sliding into place and it makes a perfect sort of sense only in retrospect. Because at the time, when Jason died, when everything had been raw and angry, she had seen the world through fuzzy and indistinct glasses, and she hadn't even noticed Dick withdrawing until months had passed and her own malaise had slowly lifted like a fog.

She sees things clearer now, and it hurts all the more like an old festering wound suddenly fresh and anew.

"C'mon," he says. "We've got to go."

She follows him back to the bioship without comment.

* * *

The team is more or less silent for the next mission. It's a six hour flight and by hour four, all the younger kids have managed something that remotely resembles sleep or are screwing around with computer games pulled up on the same full-sized monitors that read missile trajectory. It wouldn't be accurate to say that Barbara is the oldest of the group, because she isn't, but sometimes she feels like it because she is constantly worrying about stuff. She monitors sleeping patterns without even meaning to. In fact, she can classify the sleeping, eating and startle-response habits of most of her teammates.

And lately, she's been noticing M'gann is getting less rest than usual. Depression isn't an unknown quality to any of them, but this sort of behavior from M'gann is proving to be a distraction on missions at best, and outright dangerous at worst. Barbara doesn't know what to do about it, or even if she should do anything at all. They're friends, her and M'gann, but not close enough that she feels comfortable broaching the subject without it seeming out of place.

So, she corners Dick into doing it. "You have to talk to her."

"What?" he startles. "Who? M'gann?"

Barbara rolls her eyes. "Yes, Boy Wonder. I'm talking about M'gann."

"I'm not Boy Wonder anymore," he grits out, wryly, but it's a long-standing in-joke between them, one that he claims he doesn't find nearly as amusing as she does. (That's a lie.) "And don't worry about M'gann. I've already talked to her."

"You have? And how did it go?"

"She's just… having a hard time with Artemis' death. She needs time."

It's a simplistic response to a complicated knot of things life has thrown at them lately, but it's also reasonable. So she takes his point.

But about halfway through the mission, when she sees M'gann and Dick arguing over something of relative inconsequence during live battle, Barbara has a hard time deciding whether or not to take everything at face value anymore. The weird tension that she's seeing develop between Dick and practically every member of his former team is hard to miss. First Wally, now M'gann. Artemis is gone, and Aqualad a trader. The only one that Dick hasn't alienated or been alienated from is Connor, and the way he's going, Barbara suspects it won't take much time for that to come to a head, too.

_What's going on with you, Dick?_

* * *

Despite the Reach's lofty entrance into the public world, there isn't a lot to be said about them. To the media, they are respectful and intelligent. To the masses, they are civil and kind. To the scientists of the world, they are revolutionary. To the soldiers of the world, they are self-proclaimed pacifists. To the skeptics, they are patient with their answers. To the believers, they are welcoming.

To the Justice League members, they are distant.

The feeling is returned in kind.

The fact that Batman and Superman held a joint conference (or, in reality, Dick dressed as Batman and Connor disguised as Superman), and cautioned the world against the Reach has done little in abating problems. The world continues to march on to the tune of G. Gordon Godfrey's entirely un-ironic song of acceptance.

The night after the press conference, Batgirl is seen out on patrol with "Batman" because appearances must be maintained. It throws her, as it always will, to see Dick in Bruce's costume. She remembers three years ago, when Bruce had taken up sky diving and he'd brought Barbara and Dick along for lessons; the way the two men had acted apart had never been more apparent than when she'd watched them fall through three thousand feet of air. Bruce was contained and deadly while Dick had been getting his yaya's out by throwing himself out of the plane, spinning and twirling to flip-flop around while the air soared around him. Barbara had laughed so much, and she'd suspected that even Bruce's sever disapproval was mostly for show because it was hard to watch Dick like that and _not_be amused.

She hasn't seen Dick laugh like that lately.

In fact, she's hard-pressed to remember the last time Dick laughed _at all_, and you could always count on him to find something humorous about a situation. Dark humor, sure, but it was a quality he adopted from a young age. That sort of thing came with the territory of being orphaned, and she can still remember his cackling laugh from when they were kids, how he'd make up words like "whelmed" and "traught" and a thousand other dorkish things, and the more Barbara observes him that night during patrol, the more she hates the fact that he's playing dress-up as Batman.

Dick should never act like Bruce. He isn't Bruce. He just… _isn't._

All in all, the night is tense. They take out a group of thugs in Gotham's crumbling strip of neighborhoods near the Narrows. Barbara backflips away from gunfire while Dick advances, and the two move as one to corner the group into a room where the lights all go out. They take out six guys one-by-one before the authorities arrive.

"Ready to call it a night?" he calls out, from behind Batman's mask. "I'm beat."

Which is total _bullshit_, because he never gets tired before four in the morning but lately he's been using that excuse more and more. He's keeping secrets from her, she's sure of it. She's been getting undeniable vibes for months now, but it's taken her this long to confront them head on. It makes her think of a clear distinction, one that would suit her well to remember.

Dick might not _be_ Bruce, but he's definitely learned well from him.

* * *

Afterwards, when they part, Barbara ostensibly headed for her dad's place while Dick heads back to the Manor, she decides to shift course and follow him. She doesn't know if its paranoia or due diligence, but she can hear Bruce's voice in her head telling her to follow her intuition and so she does. Dick hasn't even done anything overtly to arouse her suspicions, and she doesn't even suspect of him of anything in _particular. _It's just… gut instincts. Gnawing and loud, and she can't shake off the feeling that he's been lying to her about something for far too long.

When she follows him back to the Manor, her shoulders slump in relief and a tide of embarrassment washes over her at being so paranoid, but no less than two minutes later he's leaving it again. She blends into the shadows as he pulls out his motorbike and reeves the engine, taking off at a reckless speed. Barbara has no clue where he's going, but she can't follow him without him noticing so she has no choice but to rush into the Batcave and use the GPS tracker on his bike to find his final destination.

When he rides full-tilt to the edges of Blüdhaven, Barbara can't for the life of her figure out what he's doing there. He stays there for a full hour, and then finally starts heading back. She retreats before he makes it back to the Manor, but on the way out she doesn't notice that Alfred spots her.

The next day, when she sees Dick, she asks lightly, "Get some rest last night?"

He shrugs casually. "Yeah. Pretty much crashed as soon as I got home. Man, I was tired."

She keeps silent, and smiles. It feels like it's plastered on her skin.

* * *

She starts watching him after that. Well, at first, it had been about watching _out_for him, but somewhere on the third day of surveillance, Barbara has to admit to herself that she's venturing past friendly concern into stalker-mode, but it's for his own good.

She sets up a hidden network in the batcave, feeling only vaguely guilty about the invasion of privacy but her gut instincts are too adamant. It's a little disconcerting (and secretively satisfying) that she can set up surveillance without tipping anyone off. Bruce would probably discover her in a heartbeat, had he been around, but it's not like the rest of 'em have hung around just for their pretty-boy looks. Pulling one over on Dick is a real surprise, but even Tim is a boy-genius.

But she finds she has a knack for hacking, a previously untested skill that she explores as she sets up monitors in her bedroom and breaks into security feeds and traffic cameras all across Gotham to track Dick when he starts venturing out into the city in his civilian clothes. Mostly, it's a never ending stakeout. She accrues hours worth of useless footage and a growing pile of ignored homework.

"Barbara," her father calls up from the stairs. "Dinner!"

"I'll take it up here, Dad!" she calls back. "I'm studying!"

She can hear his sigh from all the way up in her room.

* * *

Life marches on.

Rocket's wedding takes place late May, and Barbara is a bridesmaid. She dresses up in a bright yellow sundress, and feels a little doubtful about how the color probably clashes with her red hair, which is spooled in curls over her shoulders. Everyone assures her she looks lovely, but it isn't until she sees Dick dressed up in a tux that she wishes she could have chosen her own dress, something strapless or possibly backless, just to see what his reaction would have been.

The ceremony is picture perfect, with cooperative weather and a beaming couple fumbling and crying their way through their recitals – until about halfway through the walk back down the aisle when chaos breaks out. Abra Kadabra shows up. Barbara has no idea what his beef is with either the bride or groom, but he looks particularly menacing with his black hair sleeked back in a ponytail and poet shirt hanging open at the collar. He mutters a few curses, and Wally and Barry Allen take him on, but it's Zatanna going above and beyond the normal duties of the Maid of Honor, that manages to drive him fully back.

Not, of course, before Abra manages to ruin the wedding cake and nearly outs the secret identities of two-thirds of the superheroes sitting in the pews.

"Well," Rocket says, bewildered. "That was random."

* * *

Turns out, it might not have been as random as one would think.

The Reach have given Abra Kadabra real powers. Before this, it was Barry Allen who had proved to everyone that Abra's magic was nothing more than simulated science from the future. Now, it seems, the Reach's experiments on humans are unleashing hidden potential. Abra Kadabra had always wanted _real_magic, and testing it out at the wedding of a Justice League member, with over two dozen superheroes in attendance, was a bold way to make his announcement.

Abra isn't the only enemy gaining new powers. Shimmer, Mammoth and the Terror Twins all turn out to have extra powers, revealing themselves and their newfound skills at particularly threatening times.

Thankfully, not all of their enemies are going for the meta-gene. Tigress, whose been making a bigger splash in the water ever since Aqualad fell out of the picture, starts leading more and more assaults inland. About an hour before midnight on the fourth of July, the distant noises of gunfire and explosions blend in with fireworks at the east end of Star City. Barbara has no idea what the Light are doing, what they have planned next, or even if tonight's mission is a recipe for disaster. Dick's gotten intel (again) from some unnamed source, and they move out to cover the quarter mile of unguarded territory.

She gets into a fight with Tigress, but mostly Barbara comes out without a scratch on her because Wally dives in last minute with a save.

"Thanks," she tells him, afterwards.

"No problem," he beams, so openly and honestly that Barbara has to do a double-take.

She hasn't seen Wally smile like that since before Artemis was killed. It's been months since anyone's been able to draw him out of his gloomy shell, and even Dick has given up on trying. (It's been no big secret that things have been tense between both friends ever since Artemis' death. Even Green Arrow and some of the other Leaguers have commented on it.) She watches Wally walk away, wondering what she missed.

* * *

Dick doesn't call for simple stuff. Never has. Sometime during the next morning he texts _mission tomorrow_, which, after staring at her phone's screen for a full minute, Barbara decides to feel annoyed about. Despite the fact that she's been following him for weeks now, he's been crafty enough to cover his tracks.

"Alfred," she says, tentatively, turning towards the elderly man as he reapplies a bandage on her forearm. "Have you noticed anything strange about Dick lately?"

Alfred merely peers at her, face neutral. "Define _strange_, Miss."

She opens her mouth, then promptly closes it. "Never mind," she says, claming up. "Probably just my imagination."

Alfred pats her on the shoulder. "In my many years, I've come to the stark conclusion that there's very little to our imagination that is not seeded in reality. If you suspect something is bothering Dick or altering his behavior, may I suggest that the direct approach is the best?"

"Ask him?" Barbara says, dubiously. "You think I haven't tried that?"

"The men in this family are a stubborn breed," Alfred allots. "But persistence is not without results."

"Yeah," she says, tiredly. "I'm just worried what happens when my persistence pays off."

* * *

She asks Dick to join her for dinner later that week, and spends hours trying to figure out what to say. Navigating through the awkward revelation that she's been following him for some time is going to be painful to explain, but she's willing to endure it if it means they both come clean.

The way Dick keeps lying to her, keeps feeding her lines of a duplicitous nature and then turning around to sneak off… the truth is, it _hurts_. It hurts more than she can ever put into words. It rips a silent hole through her lungs because it's like he's saying he doesn't trust her. That after everything they've been through together, all the troubles and heartache and goddamn pain they've endured together, it doesn't mean enough to him. Everything about their mission goes sideways when she thinks about that, and it's not just about the lies, it's _everything. _By choosing to keep her in the dark, he's taking away one of the few foundations she thought she had left in this world.

She hates him for that, a little.

"So," he says, suddenly crashing onto her sofa without making a single sound at his entrance. "You've finally asked me out on a date, huh?"

She rolls her eyes. "In your dreams, Boy Wonder."

He lets the nickname slide without comment, grinning like the cat that ate the canary. It's a stupid sort of smile that would make other women _melt_, but she's long built up an immunity (…mostly) to it because she knew him when he was still in red-and-blue shorts and half her height. He's dressed in civilian clothes tonight: light t-shirt and dark jeans, a fair-weather denim jacket and a pair of comfortable boots that probably cost more than her mother's favorite pair of diamond earrings. Despite her protests, the idea of this being any sort of date makes her stomach flip, but Barbara knows where the boundaries of their relationship lie.

Dick Grayson isn't dating material. At least, not to her.

It'd be… too messy.

She spreads out Chinese takeout for them on the corner of her living room table. Her dad's working late and she has the apartment to herself for the night. It's not much, and definitely nothing in comparison to the Wayne Manor, but she is the farthest thing from self-conscious about her small two-bedroom apartment because this is _Dick_. As much as the tabloids sometimes follow him around, the Ward of playboy billionaire Bruce Wayne, he's a man of deceptively simple tastes.

"Catwoman ran into "Batman" the other night," Dick remarks, for what amounts to shop talk for them.

Barbara rolls her eyes. "Uh, oh. How long did your charade last with her?"

He grins again. "How do you know she didn't fall for my act?"

Barbara stares him down, because the thought of Selina Kyle thinking Dick was actually Bruce underneath that mask is one she doesn't want to carry forward too much. She's never trusted Catwoman, and can't for the life of her figure out how Selina has Bruce wrapped up so tightly around her finger. It's sex appeal, obviously, but it's more than that, but Barbara will never understand it and won't even try to dissect it. Some relationships are too contradictory to ever comprehend.

"You think," Barbara begins, with a smirk, "that a woman like Selina Kyle can't tell the difference between you and the big guy?"

"I play a convincing Dark Knight," Dick protests.

She pauses, then says, rather wryly, "You've been playing a convincing Dick Grayson too, lately."

He freezes, then raises an eyebrow at her tone. "What's that supposed to mean?"

She sighs. "It means you've been keeping secrets from me. Don't think I haven't noticed, Richard Grayson."

"You're using my full name," he remarks, wryly, dropping chopsticks back onto his paper-plate like he's suddenly lost his appetite. "That's usually a sign you're about to yell about something."

"Is not," she throws back, voice rising. "Though I am completely justified. Dick, I need you to be honest with me."

"I am," he says, staring her right in the eyes. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

It's the _boldness_of the lie that gets to her.

She crosses her arms over her chest and sits back, tries to contain her hurt, and covers it with anger. Like her father used to tease, she's a redhead and sometimes her temper can be a thing beyond her control. "Dick," she says, through gritted teeth, "I know you've been hiding something. I'm giving you the courtesy of coming directly to you rather than using my considerable talents to find out the truth some other way. Do me the favor of not treating me like a fool?"

Dick reels back. "Whoa. Where is this coming from? Barbara, I have no idea what you're talking about."

He sounds genuine. He sounds confused. He sounds even a little bit hurt.

She's never known Dick to be such a consummate actor before.

"Fine," she says, clipped and aggressive. "Forget I said anything."

Two could play at this game.

* * *

In real life, things take a long time to make sense.

And sometimes, they just _don't._

Barbara isn't sure which one this is, because when the Joker breaks out of Arkham Asylum, the world tilts on its axis. Alien invasions and monsters and secrets suddenly shrink in size, seemingly little by comparison. The truth she isn't ashamed to admit, because she's only human and has never claimed to be otherwise, is that the Joker frightens her. He scares her in a way that no other villain or superpowered monster ever has.

The part she does hide, the part she _is_ashamed about, is this: he makes her angry, too.

It's mostly anger, actually, for her. She acts calm and together on the outside, and she's there to comfort others when they need it, but the truth is inside she's never really gotten over Jason's death. She doubts she ever will, that any of them ever will. It'll remain an open wound no matter how many years pass. It's injury and insult, and just because she knows that for a hundred different reasons, the best solution still remains taking that crazy, homicidal clown back to prison, none of that stops her from feeling like the world is worse off for Batman's mercy. The Joker thought he could destroy what they had built, and for a time after Jason, Barbara almost believed he'd succeeded.

It continues to make her angry, a soft, simmering sort of rage at the injustice of it all. Because Joker is free and clear while Jason lies six feet under in the Wayne Cemetery. She hates the clown for that, and it's just a glimpse into the twisted sort of darkness that forged Bruce into Batman.

And that sort of revelation scares her more than the Joker.

That she has it in herself, that same drive and darkness. Despite following so avidly in his footsteps, she's never really considered herself to be like Bruce. She can respect a man and even idolize him more than a little, but she still acknowledges that he doesn't have the answer to everything. Bruce Wayne is a superhero among gods, but he's just a man, too.

She doesn't want to become him, and she knows she's not alone in that regard.

"As long as the Joker is out there," Dick declares, "we're doubling up when on patrol. No exceptions."

* * *

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

No exceptions in _Dick Speak _is apparently not without flaws in its logic, because she tracks him the next night when he goes out on patrol by himself. She gives Tim strict instructions at the Batcave to stay home for the entire night, but because Tim is perhaps the most sensible boy to don the Robin cape, he actually reminds Barbara that her going out on her own to follow Dick is just as reckless as what Dick is doing. She can't argue with that, as much as she wants to, so she reluctantly agrees to his back up.

Mostly, Tim stays out of any fights that break out between Dick and Barbara. Most of the time, he gives up in disgust and goes to do something somewhere else, calling, _Let me know when the happy couple are done, okay?_as he does it. Which just annoys both Dick and Barbara, but it doesn't happen too often. Lately, though, ever since confronting Dick and getting back a flat, hard denial, the strain of tension between them has risen to unprecedented heights. Tonight is on one of those times where Barbara can feel a heated fight coming like some oncoming storm, and it makes Tim tiptoe around her all night long as they follow Dick to Blüdhaven. Again, with Blüdhaven.

_What the hell is he doing there?_

He ditches the GPS at the city limits and changes his ride, and she doesn't know if he's aware she's watching him, or what, but he covers his tracks and counters her surveillance measures with triple redundancies. But Dick underestimates her ability to hack into the city feed because she spots him run a red light on the corner of Fifth and Lexington, and that's enough to lead her right to the edge of the ironworks district. Barbara and Tim perch on the rafters across the street, watching through scopes as Nightwing enters an abandoned factory. They drop down for a closer look, and what she sees stops her cold.

Tigress, perched indifferently against a stack of crates.

Aqualad, strong and robust and so very much _not _defeated, standing at her side.

And then Dick reaches forward and shakes Aqualad's hand, gripping strongly in an air of camaraderie and relief, and Barbara chokes off an exhale of shock. It doesn't make sense. She sees it, but she doesn't believe it. There's a stark moment of stunned silence, before Tim breaks it beside her with a rushed, _"whoa," _and the noise dislodges the non-functioning part of her mind.

"Are plans in place?" she overhears Aqualad ask.

"Affirmative," Dick answers. "Hopefully by the month's ends, we'll finally be in a position to take out our enemies."

"Good," Tigress says, pushing off her perch. "We can't afford for anything to go wrong. Just a few more days of this deception and we'll be free and clear. God, I can't wait."

Dick stands tall and straight. "I think we'll all be better off once this is over."

* * *

Barbara watches the entire meeting unfold, but beyond the revelation of the players, it's a bust on details. She can't follow along with what's happening because it doesn't make sense. None of it. Tim stays quiet beside her, watching through binoculars as Dick converses casually with a man responsible for Artemis' death and his right-hand woman. The entire time, Barbara tries to run the logical options.

"Tim," she says, turning to him. "I want you to go home. I want you to wait for my call. If I give you the word, I want you to contact the League Members and tell them everything you saw tonight. If you don't hear from me in two hours, I want you to contact the League Members anyway."

"I can stay here and help," Tim protests.

But he's only a kid, still not even up to her shoulders, and no matter how capable he proves himself, she won't ever be able to wipe Jason's broken body from her mind's eye. For better or worse, Tim has to live with that legacy.

"Robin," she orders, "just do as I say."

Tim sighs, then searches her face. "What are you going to do?"

She looks down at Aqualad and Tigress as they escape onto a boat and disappear into the horizon of water. Dick stands alone on the docks, and he almost blends in with the shadows surrounding him.

"I'm finally going to get some answers," she declares, coldly.

* * *

It's a brutal sort of surprise attack when she assaults Dick.

He doesn't see the pounce coming but she knocks him down from behind on the rooftop of the factory, and he hits the floor and log-rolls roughly forward. A second later, he's already recovering and throws a smoke bomb with his trailing hand, and the smoke obscures her identity because he defends himself against her attack without the benefit of seeing who he's up against. She knows _exactly _who she's up against, though. She knows his strengths, his weaknesses, where he overreaches and how far and fast those miscalculations can be his downfall.

She flings herself against him, slams an elbow to his face and buckles a knee with her boot. He grabs her arm, twists at the wrist sharp enough for pain to flare out. She thrusts a flat-heel palm up against his nose and he staggers back. He uses the cover of smoke to disappear, and then attacks her from the side again, delivering a loud, solid kick that knocks her off her feet; she smashes into the nearest wall and it's her audible grunt that stops Dick in his tracks.

The smoke clears, and Dick stares at her with widening eyes. "Barbara?" he says, breathlessly, like he's suddenly forgotten how to form words.

She attacks again. It's an angry sort of assault, all power and swiftness, too raw for her to contain. Even though he saw her coming, she must still catch him completely by surprise because he barely does a thing to stop the first two jabs she aims his way. He catches her fist on the third try, but she drops her shoulder and pivots, flinging him up and over her head so that he lands with a crash against the opposite wall.

"Barbara, wait!" he calls out.

She doesn't. Bruce once told her that he fought the best when fueled by emotion, by a type of rage that sunk deep enough into his skin that he armored himself with it. She's seen him deflect blows like he could barely feel a hit land, and she's never gotten how he could do that, not really. She gets it now. Even when Dick starts fighting back, blocking her hits and then shoving her against the rooftop, she barely feels a thing. The blunt impact of being thrown against the gravel doesn't even register.

She throws a punch with enough force to hear his jaw crack, but then Dick dodges backwards with a handspring. He rolls smoothly into a dive and goes sailing over the side of the building, catching himself on the rungs of a fire escape. She drops down after him onto the ledge, while he breaks through a second-story window. She follows him inside.

That's where she loses her advantage, because the next thing she knows, a batarang works around her, wrapping her body up in a triple loop of thick fiber rope. Her arms lock around her body and she tips forward, trapped. She lands in a crash on the floor.

"I don't want to fight you," he says, lips bloodied.

His actions confirm that, actually. Once he knew who he was facing, he defended himself against her hits and threw a few punches in self defense, but he hadn't attacked with anything truly offensive. Anger clouds the issue for her. She's sporting a rough bruise on her cheek, where discoloration will shortly blossom from a hit he landed on her, but it's like none of that matters.

None of that matters at all.

She frees a small knife she keeps in her utility belt and cuts the rope, hand-springing away from Dick. She lands on her feet a full six feet away, arms spread out at her sides, ready for attack again.

"What are you doing here?" he asks.

"I could ask you the same thing."

"Barbara, it isn't what you think."

"And what am I supposed to think?" she demands, furiously. "Months of lying, of secrets, of scurrying off to unknown rendezvous points, and then I find you meeting up with Aqaulad and his trusty sidekick. What am I supposed to think about that, Dick?!"

He closes his eyes, taking a staggering breath and then holds off her advance with a raised hand. The gesture is one that warns her off, but in a pleading sort of way like he needs a moment to recover, to clear his head. The expression on his face is as open and tortured as she's ever seen it, like the thought of her discovering his shameful little secret is as painful to him as it is to her, but she can't trust even that much. She can't trust a word he says until some of this starts making sense. The sense that could justify months of lying.

"You're right," he says, eventually. "Aqualad and I have been meeting in private. We're on the same side, but it isn't what you think. Barbara, Artemis is alive. Artemis is _Tigress._"

The words are so far out of left field that Barbara jerks back and narrows her eyes. "What?" she says, incredulous.

"Artemis is Tigress," Dick repeats. "I've been meeting them in secret because we've been orchestrating a ruse to infiltrate Black Manta's operation for nearly a year now. We've been trying to take down the Light and their allies from the inside."

"God, Dick, how can I trust you?"

"Because it's _me,_" he says. "You really think I would betray the League to the Light?"

She stops, wavering, and then shakes her head. "You've been lying to me for _months._"

"I had to keep you in the dark. Only four people knew about this mission at the beginning. I had to keep it a secret."

"You didn't trust me, and now you expect me to trust _you_?"

"Barbara," he breathes out, desperately. "I didn't even tell Batman about any of this."

The weather outside opens up with a sharp flash of lightning, and then a second later thunder rumbles. The rain hits the tin rooftop in a weird staccato sound, but neither Dick nor Barbara seem to notice. They stare at each other, caught up in a clash of silent recriminations and unvoiced pleas, and Barbara turns more at war without herself than she is with Dick. Because she wants to believe him, so badly, but if it turns out to be another lie she'll never forgive herself for falling for it.

"I can't," she chokes out, pained. "I _can't _trust you."

His face goes stiff and blank, and it's a clear tell that she's hurt him, badly, but then he shakes his head and looks away, the gesture resigned and knowing. She waits for him to say something, to convince her. He put them in this position. He's lied too many times.

None of that stops her from _wanting _to believe him.

"Hey," a third voice suddenly speaks up, shattering the tense moment. Barbara whirls to find Wally and M'gann standing at the entrance, wearing heavy rain-coats and their costumed uniforms. The former waves a hand awkwardly, and looks to Dick. "Got held up," Wally says to him. "Guess we missed the meeting with the guys?"

"You're in on this too?" Barbara asks, before the words catch up with her brain and she realizes, _of course. _"Is… is Artemis alive?" she demands.

Dick nods to him, and Wally answers, "Yeah. She's Tigress."

It's a sad comment on the state of affairs that she believes Wally over Dick, but there's no way Wally would lie about that. Artemis was – is? – too important to him. She exchanges a look between the two men, and neither move. The ball is in her court. Adrenaline pumps away in her veins, but Barbara takes a deep, steadying breath and nods.

"Call them back," she orders. "Aqualad and Artemis. I want to speak with them."

* * *

It takes some maneuvering and protesting and sheer stubborn will, but she gets them to call back Aqualad and Artemis to the factory. Over half-an-hour later, during which Dick tries and fails to get Barbara talking, she's standing in front of hard proof. She means to demand answers, but instead she finds herself as a passive recipient to it, like she's being told a bedtime story full of monsters and magic. Tigress takes off her pendant, and Barbara is witness to a reunion between Wally and Artemis, complete with desperate kissing, while Aqaulad holds his post on the other end of the room, completely silent.

Dick explains everything. The ruse, the fake death, Kaldur's slow rise to second-in-command in his father's ranks, the Light's partner and how they'd been trading off information. The reason for blowing up Mount Justice. Barbara stands rigid the entire time, processing the information and infrequently asking questions, and it's usually Dick that answers but she can't look him in the eye for the life of her.

For every question answered, there's another two in follow up. She's not sure when Dick came up with this plan, but she's almost positive it was his brainchild because she can read the deft touch of his labor throughout. Manipulation and misdirection – Batman would be so proud.

And a part of Barbara, the same part that trained alongside Dick all these years, can completely and utterly understand why he did what he did. She can appreciate the level of skill and sacrifice in doing any of this.

But mostly, Barbara can't get over the fact that the lies have piled so high.

It _stings._

"Batgirl," M'gann says, stepping forward. "I know how you feel. I felt angry too, that I was lied to about everything. It hurt, and it nearly cost Kaldur his mind because I attacked him not knowing that truth."

"But you restored my mind," Kaldur says to her, in that placating tone Barbara hasn't heard from him in years. "I told you, my friend, all is forgiven."

M'gann looks away, eyes filled with shame – and so many things about the last few months are suddenly making sense to Barbara. So many undercurrents of tension, of secrets. _So many._ "I've learned about what they're doing," M'gann explains. "I've learned what its _cost_them. You're angry, and you have every right to be, but please listen to them. They did this with the best of intentions."

Barbara stares at M'gann. "Does Connor know?"

She nods. "Yes. I told him not too long after I found out."

"But the fewer people that know," Dick adds, throwing M'gann a look of reproach, "the better."

Barbara stiffens.

"We must leave," Aqualad declares. "We've lingered too long."

She's witness to another round of Wally and Artemis kissing, and it suddenly occurs to her how painful this must be for the couple. Snatches of reunions only minutes long, the ruse of grief, the pressure of being a double-agent. She's always envied Wally and Artemis for what they had (have), because it's strong and unshakable. She pitied him when Artemis was taken, but now she wonders that even with all that, even with so much working against them, Barbara finds herself still envious. At least with Artemis, Wally has someone he can trust implicitly.

Barbara realizes she can no longer claim the same.

* * *

The ride back to Gotham City takes Dick and Barbara over an hour, the sense of urgency which had propelled her to Blüdhaven now stripped from her. She reluctantly settles into the back of Dick's sleek motorbike because Tim had taken home her own transportation. Rain soaks both of them as she wraps her arms around Dick's torso, keeping silent the entire ride, only stopping once to call Tim and tell him to forgo calling the Justice League. She leaves the full explanation for Dick to explain later, because the least he can do is face Tim when he tries to justify the layers of lies he's laid down. Barbara won't do that for him.

The city races by, and Barbara holds herself stiff. Her hair mats to her face in wet curls and she fights off a shiver, but she doesn't mold herself against Dick's lean body for extra warmth. In fact, she hates being so close to him. Once or twice, she considers forcing him to pull over and figure out another way home, but she's in her Batgirl uniform and she's never been the impractical kind. For one thing, Barbara still has questions left. She hasn't voiced them yet, because her mind is still trying to sort out all the details, but she knows the conversation and explanations are far from over.

For another thing, Dick seems to sense her mood and isn't pushing. So at least there's that. He's always been good at reading her, and for the first hour, it's completely silent as he dips and bobs his bike through the shambled inner-city streets towards her father's place. Eventually, they arrive. The steady thrum of rain is barely a footnote in the evening, though she knows she probably looks like a drowned rat under the streetlights. Dick climbs off the bike after her, and she turns around and faces him in the corner alley behind her apartment. There's nothing to say, though.

The fire escape ladder is just above her head, and Barbara does a neat acrobatic flip to catch the steel rung and tug the ladder down. It lands with a heavy thud in the mud, and Barbara starts climbing up.

"Barbara," Dick calls.

She stops climbing, and looks down at him.

There's a beat of silence. "Are we okay?" he asks. The rain nearly drowns out his voice, but she can hear the anxiety lacing it, the thick stench of fear that coats over the words. She can even see it in his eyes. "Tell me we'll be okay," he says.

"I don't know," she answers, feeling bitter and small. "I just don't know, Dick."

It's his fault for that.

* * *

tbc...


	2. Chapter 2

Barbara spends the next three days with a terrible cold, which is probably not surprising given that she'd been soaked through and through with rain for several hours, but it still takes a bad patch of time and makes it even worse. She's unable to sleep with her ears clogged and nose filled with, apparently, lead. But her thoughts are the true culprit behind her sudden bout of insomnia, because she can't stop thinking. She just can't. Her father brings home soup when he returns from work every night, and since it's just her and her dad on most days anyway, the apartment is unusually quiet. She's normally never at home at nights.

It should be easy, by now, to compartmentalize her feelings and the logistical part of her brain, to sparse between the two and just move on. Dick lied, yes, but not without reason. She can recognize that. Every morning the news blasts a stream of footage about the Reach, Earth's so-called new ally, and the growing number of missing people off the streets of Gotham City increase little by little. No one that people would miss. Homeless, vagrants, criminals – even Stephanie had been a runaway, which was why she was probably targeted.

Barbara knows desperate times call for desperate measures, and what Aqualad and Artemis are doing requires more talent and courage than perhaps Barbara can ever imagine. The work – the ruse, the lies – it might be all worth it, if it means the end of the Reach and the Light.

It becomes a mantra inside Barbara's head, something to lessen the sting of betrayal.

(It isn't very effective, especially at first.)

* * *

The next day after the factory, despite feeling under the weather and still stinging from bruised feelings, she meets up with Dick and goes over the plans in the security of the batcave. Tim joins them, at first. He provides a neat little buffer to offset the tension in the air she can't quite shake, and for the few first hours, it's enough to let Barbara work through the logistics with Dick without extreme friction.

But halfway to lunch, Tim leaves because he has plans with Stephanie, and no one wants their standard routine to shift much. It'd bring about too much attention, Dick stresses.

"You want some coffee?" he asks her, his version of _sorry I was a jerk and lied to you for months_, apparently.

He hasn't apologized yet, not explicitly, not even once. She hates that about him, how he can be so stubborn about his plans and then so thickheaded in the aftermath because he's got the emotional IQ of an amoeba. Barbara has always been straight and to the point. She's never hesitated on apologizing if she thinks it's necessary, and she holds others to the same standard.

She declines the cup without even glancing at him, and she can hear Dick release a long, drawn out breath.

He hates it when she stonewalls him; like she _cares_.

"Look, Babs, I just wanted to say… I never wanted to lie to you about anything, but it was necessary."

"You've said that already," Barbara replies. "Several times."

"It hasn't been the easiest thing to do this."

"It _shouldn't_ be," she returns, trying to control the pitch of her voice. "Lying to your closest friends and family for nearly a year? It shouldn't be easy. If it was, we'd have a bigger problem."

His face falls. "Barbara—"

"No," she cuts in, raising a hand. She takes a long, steadying breath, because she promised herself she wouldn't make this process difficult. Anymore difficult than it needs to be, anyway. "Let's just get back to work. I still need to understand what your backup plan is should Aqualad and Artemis fail in their deception."

There's a long bout of silence.

She stares at him, mortified. "God, Dick, tell me you have a backup plan."

"I have one, yes," he protests, making a face, "but it's…" he stops, sighing. "You're not going to like it."

She rolls her eyes. "Somehow I figured as much, seeing as Plan A was—" she waves her hand around, "—this."

He rolls his eyes back. "Look, let's just go over the current logistics," he says, voice growing a little terse; he's never been the most patient sort of individual when his work is brought into question, but she isn't going to be delicate just to spare his pride. "We've got a lot of details to go over already. No need to jump ahead of ourselves."

She clenches her jaw, because of course, more _secrets._ "Fine."

"Fine," he returns, clipped.

The rest of the afternoon unfolds with enough tension between them that a knife couldn't even cut through it.

* * *

She throws a two-bit thug over her head and he crashlands into the dumpster. She jumps up to her feet and whirls on the other assailants, fighting off three men at the same time. Anger fuels her hits, along with frustration and resentment and a thousand other darker emotions, and she escapes into the release that only a good, clean fight can offer. She swings out with a hard jab, fist connecting with a square jaw. One man drops, and the other two take his place on either side of her. She throws a punch, again and again, using the forward momentum of her body to drive each of them back. Barbara's mouth starts to twist into victory as the last robber hits the ground, and she dives into a roundhouse kick and lands gracefully on her feet, knocking him unconscious.

She's nearly breathless in the aftermath, but there are four men groaning or unconscious all around her.

Wonder Girl lands beside her, breaking the hush. "Nice," she comments, staring at Barbara with an uplifted eyebrow. "Um, is there anything you want to talk about, Batgirl?"

There are too many sharp edges and not enough relief. If things were normal, if things were like they were a few year ago, Batman would be overseeing everything; Dick might still be out near the bluffs of the city, going his separate way as Nightwing but more often than not he'd still be meeting up with Barbara to patrol the western end; Tim (or Jason) would be learning the ropes of the business, advancing by leaps and bounds; and there would be Alfred in the background, patching people up, dispensing sage advice and dry humor. She never thought there'd be a "good ol' days" in their business, but things made sense back then.

Now, none of it makes sense.

"I'm fine," Barbara replies, taking a breath. "I'm good."

* * *

"Anybody else would've done it."

"No. No, they wouldn't." She's got him pinned with a tired look, because he should at least acknowledge there had been other options. "You did. You made this decision."

"I did what I had to."

The tension stretches like rope being pulled taut, and her mouth tilts in a lopsided smile. "You don't get it, do you? You're acting just like _him_."

"Someone has to," Dick argues.

She walks away when he says stuff like that.

* * *

And because Barbara is, if anything, a woman that can get lost in the cross-stitches of academia, books, and computers, she finds another outlet in her school work. She's several years ahead of her age-bracket, having graduated two years early and is already registered for the summer session at Gotham University under a Wayne Scholarship. She's going through half the standard lower-division classes, but because _overachiever_ is practically stamped into her DNA, she decides to audit a few of the upper-division classes that she plans on taking in a year or two.

Her favorite turns out to be "Criminology 101."

During the daytime, she quickly lets go of everything else in the lull of university chaos. The class is actually made up a nice, diverse set of people; there's Claudette, the third year psych major from Arkansas; Amanda, a gymnast; Peter, the first of two ex-military in the class; and the guy sitting next to her is a former marine, one with a bad-knee injury by the name of Jason Bard. She lets him crib off her notes on the few days he's out because of physical therapy, and because he's a sweet guy he buys her lunch to make up for it.

All in all, she makes friends quickly.

It's a distraction, at best. But a welcomed one.

* * *

Connor returns from an unscheduled mission with two dozen kids in tow, all refugees from the Reach's experiments. His standoffish behavior among most teammates has made it difficult to ever really connect with him, though she thinks being one of eight conspiracists (the original four, plus Connor, M'gann, Tim and Barbara) in an elaborate scheme… well, that should forge some sort of a bond. But Connor merely nods at her once, some sort of acknowledgement that they carry the same secret, and that's _that_.

It's a little frustrating, actually. She wants to talk with someone, but she's not sure who. Tim has always idolized Dick to a hero-worshiping degree, so his thoughts on the plan quickly fall perfectly into line with Dick's way of thinking. She doesn't want to burden Tim unnecessarily with _more_ pressure, especially since he's just a kid and unloading on him like that about Dick would be unfair. Later, M'gann even offers to talk it over with Barbara, and they try, really, but it's awkward. Barbara secretly owns up that she'd prefer to hash this entire thing out with Artemis, because they always got along, but obviously that's not an option.

To her surprise, then, Wally West turns out to be a good substitute.

"It's frustrating," Wally admits, when they meet up one day outside Star City. "I don't even remember why I said yes to this crazy plan some days. But we all agreed, and Artemis was insistent. It was hard – _really_ hard the first couple of weeks. It got better after I kept seeing "Tigress" on missions. Just _seeing_ her helped. Of course we were fighting at the time, but—"

"That's nothing new to your relationship?" Barbara cuts in, trying to lighten the mood; she's well familiar with the affectionate squabbling between the archer and speedster, and while it's hardly the same thing as what's happening now, it manages to get a sheepish grin out of Wally.

Even though they're both Dick's closest friends, she's never really had reason to meet up with Wally outside of group hangouts. They have little in common, and even less when you remove Dick from the equation. So it's a pleasant surprise that sharing their frustration over the secret-plan-to-save-the-world turns out to be a boon for their friendship, because his warmth and good humor manages to draw out a smile or two. Plus, his concerns illuminate her own.

"You've been…" she begins, a bit awkwardly, "With Dick, it's hard not to notice that you two have been fighting a lot lately."

He raises one eyebrow a tiny calibrated amount, and says, "Look who's talking."

_Touché._

She hasn't, really, been outright fighting with Dick in front of the others, but Wally knows Dick too well, and she supposes tensions might have been noticeable if you knew what to look for. For a beat, she thinks Wally might offer a reciprocal tidbit of information about his hang-ups if she told him hers. He's doing a better job at covering his emotions now than before, but she wonders how much pressure a man like Wally can take over the safety and risk to a loved one before he starts pushing away people he holds responsible; she knows Wally has been holding Dick more than a little responsible.

"Do you think it's worth it?" she asks him.

"You're asking the wrong guy," Wally tells her. "I don't think anything's worth Artemis being in this much danger."

She can understand that, but it isn't entirely fair either. Some things _are_ worth the risk. Barbara knows that. She knows that even if it all goes to hell in a handbag, she can still recognize that the effort might be worth the cost. The world is at risk; the fight needs to get messy. Whatever her frustrations with Dick are, it doesn't include the practicalities of his plan. It's bold and risky, and she wishes he'd brought her into the fold, but there's no point in crying over spilled milk. Barbara's always believed in that. She just has to suck it up and move on.

(Believing is one thing. Following through, _another._)

* * *

"The Reach," Nightwing debriefs everyone, in the new HQ facilities, "have at least six confirmed spaceships hovering over New York, Tokyo, Russia, India, Australia and Egypt. This lines them up perfectly for a global invasion is they ever tried it."

"Thankfully," Barbara adds on, doing her role with aplomb; in public, they try their best to be as in sync with each other as they ever were. "In their efforts to remain friendly with the public, they've opened up certain parts of their ships to public tours. Our job is to get on one of those tours for each ship, and get our own long-range sensors on board to monitor their movements."

"If we can plant additional surveillance devices," Dick adds, "even better. Though I'm not holding my breath on that because they have high security on all tech onboard. It's not going to be easy."

"It never is," Blue Beetle mutters.

"No problem," Impulse insists, grinning. "We can be in and out before anyone even notices."

"Negative," Dick says. "Anyone that was on the raid to Aqualad's ship is crossed off the list. Especially if you were unmasked. You might be recognized. Rocket and Zatanna will lead the teams, and hopefully by the end of the week we'll have each ship internally monitored."

"It's important that you maintain your cover identities," M'gann adds. "We've had secure information trickle in regarding the Ambassador of the Reach. He usually stays exclusively on the New York ship, which might imply that the ship hovering over US is the Mothership. It remains top priority."

"Who gave you that information?" Impulse asks.

"J'onn," M'gann answers with an easy lie.

And the world keeps spinning.

* * *

Then the Joker shows up, and the world stops spinning entirely. It stops moving, it stops tumbling, it stops rotating on its axis and draws to a screeching dead halt while Barbara keeps going with the flow, the momentum dislodging her from her static role in the world to fling her across like turbulence on an air carrier. Or at least, it feels like that to Barbara.

She's running full-tilt across asphalt, leaping from rooftops or using her modified grappling hooks to maneuver between buildings. She moves like something is right at her heels, but the truth is, this is a chase and she's out on the hunt. Twelve hours worth of surveillance, another three of pursuit, after two days of waiting and a full week of trying to figure out what the psychopath's next move was going to be – and it's all lead to this.

She can't decide if today is going to be a good day, or a very, very bad one.

"Target acquired," Dick says, over her earpiece. "Moving in."

"Be careful," she tells him, doubling her speed.

Her lungs burn and adrenaline pumps through her system like battery acid.

She's still nearly too late.

By the time she makes it to the edge of the Narrows, Joker's men have already moved out and she can see smoke rising in the distance. It wafts into the air, looming and ominous, right over the area where Dick had last reported from. She tries him on the radio again but doesn't get an answer. Fear grips her.

"Little Batboy," Joker taunts, from behind. She whirls to find him standing over Nightwing's body, and it's like something straight out of her nightmare, something that's always been her biggest fear. Dick's suit is burned, and she realizes he's been in an explosion. "You've got some guts coming here without backup," he says to Dick, laughing. There's a gun in his hands. "Now, answer me honestly, where's the Batman? I just miss him so _much._ It just isn't the same without him! And I know that winged rat that's been flying around lately _isn't_ him. Tell me where he is!"

She throws a batarang across the space, knocking Joker's gun away. "Freeze, Joker!"

He laughs, like everything's a joke and he's always the punch line. "Oh, look, it's your little girlfriend. Isn't she pretty?"

Nightwing stirs, groaning on the asphalt. "Don't—"

And Joker kicks him in the stomach to shut him up.

Barbara leaps across the rooftop and rolls gracefully into a crouch. She throws a smoke pellet to cover for her advance, and the Joker laughs while he coughs, giddy like a schoolgirl for reasons she'll never comprehend. It's surprisingly easy to apprehend him, but he's never been a fighter; his advantage has always come from surprises, from the sheer lunacy of his plans, but he seems more amused at Barbara's efforts than concerned, even after she has him in handcuffs in four short maneuvers.

"Have you seen the Batman?" he asks her, eyes large. "It's not the same without him! I want the Batman! _WHERE IS HE?_"

If possible, he looks even more deranged than usual.

"Shut up!" she warns him, tying him to the nearest steel pipe while she goes to check on Dick. "Don't do anything, or I swear I'll—"

"You'll what?" Joker taunts. "Use foul language? Little girl playing dress up like daddy-bat. One day I think I'll clip your wings."

* * *

Before Tim has his rotation, or Alfred, Barbara takes her turn.

She sits beside Dick's bedside while he sleeps, and it's too quiet. _Concussion, a multitude of second-degree burns, two broken ribs, and a fractured wrist._ He got off easy, but she still has to wake him every hour to make sure everything is okay.

She always knew it would come to this. One way or another, someone in her life was going to suffer at the hands of the Joker again. It was only a matter of time and she hopes that this is it – this is the price – but a part of her wonders if it's just wishful thinking and the Joker will come back again, like he _always_ does, and claim yet another victim. There are too many good people in her life: her father, the most honest cop you could find in the most corrupt city in America – or Dick or Bruce or Tim; she has so many close friends that routinely risk life and limb to keep the world safe, but there's a difference between friends and family. Those that wear some form of the bat-symbol across their breastplate are _family_.

That's why she continues to be so upset with Dick. Practical or not, necessary or not, trust is one of the few things that Barbara holds sacrosanct. Without it, she doesn't know what they have.

But the lies seem smaller now, like a pitiful thing in comparison to the pile of limbs lying before her. She may not always agree with everything he does, or how goes about doing it, but she still… _cares_ about Dick. Intensely. And whether Dick is willing to admit it or not, he needs her.

They need each other.

"Stop thinking so hard," Dick says, his familiar voice hoarse, tugging her out of her thoughts.

The tension snaps just like that, and her mouth tilts in a lopsided smile. "Hey. You're awake."

"Is that what we're calling it?" he replies, trying to clear his throat. "Everything still whelmed?" he asks.

"Joker's still in prison," Barbara answers.

A little too complacently, if you ask her. She's still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Silence falls, and Barbara decides to ignore all the fresh history between them when she reaches forward to take his hand and squeeze it. In the soft hush, it feels perfectly ordinary for him to flash her his customary smile, the one that would make a girl swoon if she didn't know him any better (but Barbara's main problem in life recently is that she _does_ know Dick, a little too well); this smile is one of reassurance, one that says he's all right, no matter the state and color of the various injuries and bruises on his body; they've done this little dance often enough, even traded spots in the routine so that sometimes she leads and he follows. In their line of work, she can't count the number of times he's had her back and she's had his.

A part of her suspects that he might be milking this moment for all its worth, trying to undo some of the wreckage that's lately fallen between them. She should be immune to that, or at least a little bit annoyed at what can be construed as emotional manipulation, but she can't bring herself to care.

"Hey, Babs," he says, groggily – and yeah, he's _definitely_ milking this, "thanks."

He's asleep before she can answer, but she sits forward in her chair and pulls the blanket over him. "Anytime," she murmurs, "Boy Wonder."

And she means that, always.

* * *

In her criminology class, she studies a series of signs in order to detect a lie. _Nostrils flare. Breathing is audible or deep. Lips tighten. Body takes up less space; shoulders are pulled up, elbows pulled closely to sides. Broken eye contact. Eyebrows tighten. Shoulders shrug nonchalantly._

Dick displays almost none of these. It isn't out of malice or insult that she looks for these signs, but more out of the need to never be fooled like that again. In their line of work, she needs to pick up on tells, to be able to adapt to shifting allegiances or to be able to confront the things that don't seem right.

The old saying is a lie. Ignorance is never bliss.

So she studies Dick some more and notes other classic tells: _Closed palms. Puts objects (even folded arms) between themselves and accuser. Body is turned away, not facing accuser. Shorter responses._

"What?" Dick asks her, when he finds her staring one day.

She shakes her head and smiles. "Nothing."

Now who's lying?

* * *

"Hey, Barbara," Jason Bard whispers to her, during class, "Um, I was wondering if you were doing anything this weekend?"

"Why?" Barbara asks back, distracted, because the teacher has moved on to talking about symptoms found is schizophrenic criminals, including repetitive, involuntary muscle movements (such as lip smacking), and she's troubled by thoughts of the Joker.

Apparently, she's only the thickest person _alive_ when it comes to someone asking her out.

* * *

"Hey, kiddo," her dad greets. "Going out?"

"Yeah, just have a few plans for the night."

"With Dick?"

She pauses, then tries to play off the answer as light as she can, "Nope. Just some other friends."

Her father nods, a thoughtful look on his face. "You know—"

"Gotta go, Dad. Sorry!"

She hears him bid a wary goodnight just before the door shuts.

* * *

Dicks asks her to meet him at their favorite Italian restaurant on a Wednesday afternoon, the one they frequent together near the campus.

Her eyes find him without trying, where he's sitting in a reclusive section in the back, and her pace slows for just a fraction of a second. He has one arm thrown over the back of his chair, peering away from her, and for once she has a moment to observe him without him noticing. He looks _tired._ Though pristinely groomed and terribly handsome, she can't deny that he's been looking worn thin lately. A spike of regret and sympathy stabs through her before anything can be done about it. He's wearing shades, even indoors, but she knows that there now seems to be a permanent dark shadow under his eyes, a forever state of too-little-sleep and too-much-stress.

There's a box sitting on the table in front of him. When she sits down, she barely has a chance to say _hello_ before he nudges it in front of her, and says, "Open it."

She stares at the box for a long second, before sliding off the cover and peering inside. Then closes it quickly and jerks her gaze up, staring at Dick in surprise.

"It's cool," he assures, shedding his sunglasses. "No ones around. I've checked for listening devices. The place is clean."

Tentatively, she glances about to make sure no one is watching them. Then she lifts the lid quietly and looks inside again. She can see a handful of fake IDs, birth certificates, social security cards and "official" paperwork. She digs through and discovers Dick's alias first, Nicholas Lynch, a New York resident who backpacks a lot through Europe, apparently. He's aged himself up by nearly five years.

"This is my Plan B," he says.

The implications sink in. "You're prepared to go underground," she says, looking up at him.

Dick clarifies with a hushed tone, "I'm prepared to fake my own death, if necessary. I'm prepared to go all the way with this. It was my Plan B from the start."

Her stomach sinks like it's suddenly a bottomless cavern. Artemis' death was bad enough, but for a moment Barbara imagines how devastating Dick's death would have been to her. Her hands suddenly feel sweaty, throat parched dry like sandpaper, and she turns away from him because she can't look him in the eye.

Then she finds a passport with her picture in it, except the name says _Lucy Lynch_ on it, age 23. There's a matching birth certificate and social security card. She doesn't know if "Lucy" and "Nicholas" are related or… _married_, or what, and the question is absurd to be fixated on, but it sticks in her throat. It refuses to dislodge.

"I need you to know how serious this is," Dick goes on to say. "I didn't do any of this lightly. I knew what I was risking, and I'm willing to go all the way. I prepared myself for a lot of things, even the idea of faking my own death. Hell, even my _actual_ death. But I underestimated one thing."

"What's that?"

"Just how much it would hurt to betray the people that I love."

She looks up, and it's the last word that catches her by surprise the most.

"I'm sorry," he says, finally – _finally_ uttering those words she's been waiting weeks to hear. "I can't tell you how sorry I am. I never wanted to hurt you, Babs. Not _you_."

She doesn't know what to make of the emphasis he places on _you_, but her shoulders sag. She reaches across to lay her hand across his. He turns his palm over and takes her grip into his own, squeezing once, and something lifts off her shoulder – anger, a weight, an awful sort of pain – she can't define it, but she feels lighter and better than she's felt in a very long while.

"Okay," she says.

She's not sure what she's agreeing to, specifically, but when Dick smiles, soft and genuine for the first time in the longest time, she thinks she'd agree to pretty much anything in that moment.

* * *

Her life doesn't change all that much, really. In fact, it almost returns to default.

Barbara goes on missions; she designs new security protocols sometimes, because as much as Dick is a genius, he doesn't understand the nuisances of technology as naturally as Barbara can. It helps with the subterfuge, actually. She designs a method of communication that can work with very little fingerprints left behind, and resolves on molding it to something they can perhaps use to communicate with Artemis and Aqualad on a semi-regular basis. (Wally threatens to kiss her senseless for this.)

Mostly, her time is split unevenly between classes and the standard missions and patrolling. Things with Dick finally take a turn for the better, the messy tension between them ebbing away into familiar camaraderie and affection. She isn't aware of just how much she missed him until she finally has him back again. It's the small things that mean the most to her: cooking dinner on Tuesday evenings with him; the synch of a clean duel assault against a group of bad guys; the furtive exchange of knowing looks across a table. In-jokes, code-words, the slow restructuring of a bond that she'd thought wrecked, but turns out it'd just been battered a little.

As Dick tells her the _full_ history behind the last few months, including the fights with Wally, the worry over Artemis, the secret concerns over Aqualad's true loyalties before they had been lain to rest, she starts to fully appreciate how much Dick has gone through, how much he's sacrificed. So even as she burrows into the fold and listens to the plan's formation, she continues to keep an eye on him. As one who's spent the least amount of time with the burden of this heavy secret – but not one who's unused to carrying long-hidden secrets – Barbara knows what tolls that can take on a person. Dick's not holding it together as well as he'd like others to think, but she can be there for him now. What else is family for?

Anyway, life moves on. During her downtime, she snatches the rare free afternoon to hang out with Jason. He's sweet and funny, and it might just work out between them because he doesn't press her for answers when she finds herself making up excuses – which is a good thing in her life. She doesn't want to lie to him, but it's part and parcel with her job, and so she has to make do. But she tries very, very hard not to lie to him. There's enough in her history that she can sell him without fear of contradicting herself; her family, her parents, how she grew up in Gotham and went to boarding school on scholarship. Her former gymnastic days.

He grins and pulls her close to kiss her cherry-red lips. "Catholic school girl uniforms _and_ leotards?" he murmurs. "You're killing me here with imagery, red."

If only he knew about the Batgirl suit.

But she simply punches him in the ribs, and he just laughs and talks about his own misadventures during youth and going through basic training as the youngest recruit in his group. Barbara nods; his knee-injury and subsequent honorable discharge is a subject they don't discuss often. She's gathered enough to know that he still gets nightmares sometimes, but his injury is one that he won't let stop him from joining Gotham's Police Force. At which point, she decides it's finally time to introduce him to her father; at end of summer, she cooks spaghetti and invites Jason over for supper, and the two men get along splendidly.

When she finally uses some of the Wayne scholarship money to rent out a place of her own, Jason helps her move. She's going to miss her small two-bedroom apartment she shared with her dad in Old Town, but it's more than time. Jason smirks when she berates the movers, and helps her carry boxes full of textbooks and shiny new computer equipment (all with the Wayne logo etched on the back). He even takes over assembling the heavy-duty home office workspace, which she claims she needs desperately "for schoolwork."

After that, her home becomes her base of operations, the place she returns to as sanctuary when she's not out with her teammates. The closet becomes home to her batsuit, alongside her casual wear, and she wants to clear a small shelf for Jason to store his stuff when he spends the night, but she can't afford for him to get too noisy in her nightlife so most of the time she still stays over at his place rather than him spending time at hers.

All in all, things finally seem to be getting back to a measure of normal.

Relatively speaking, of course.

* * *

Lately, Stephanie Brown has been running underfoot when Barbara, Dick or Tim go out on nightly patrols. When it happens a third time in a row in the short span of a week, Barbara sits her down and lectures for nearly fifteen minutes on why it's stupid and dangerous for Stephanie to even be _aware_ of the nightly patrols, much less a tag along.

"Sheesh," Steph mutters, idly. "You'd think I've never gone up against a psychotic hostage-holding martial arts master who wants to kill me before. I am trained in several forms of defensive training, you know? I don't get along with my dad, but he didn't raise a damsel-in-distress."

"That's not the point," Barbara says, because she's in fact been witness to Steph's fighting skills, and it _is_ more than a little impressive. "You can't just go out with us like fighting crime is a pastime. We wear uniforms. We have protection and training. We don't do this for the thrills."

"And you think I do?" Steph throws back, getting angry. "I just... wanted to... _help._"

She storms off before Barbara can answer, and Tim trades a look with her before Barbara nods at him to go after her. He takes off without needing to be told twice, calling Steph's name.

After a beat, Dick comes to stand beside her with his arms folded over his chest. "You know," he says, lazily. "I remember once upon a time when you just wanted to help, and Batman wasn't exactly too thrilled about it."

"Very keen observation," Barbara remarks, wryly. "It's not the same. Batman isn't here. We've got enough to deal with without letting someone new into the fold. I like Steph, I do. But we can't afford to get sloppy or take on strays right now."

He tips an eyebrow up. "All right. I'll let this be your call."

It's a clear olive branch. He's trying, he really is.

"Thanks," she says softly.

He gives her a smile, and it's more than just buoyant and open; he's staring at her with too much enjoyment to warrant for the moment, and she has to take a deep breath and turn away before she responds with a smile that is equally as telling. She pulls off her mask. It's a little worn around the edges, and she muses to herself that she might need to don on a replacement before the next patrol.

"I'll see you on Monday," she tells him.

"What about tomorrow?" Dick speaks up from behind. "Not patrolling?"

"Can't," she answers.

"Another date?"

Barbara freezes, because she has never said one word about Jason, but of course it's entirely unsurprising that Dick knows anyway. She turns around, and Dick's mouth spreads into a teasing smile – but this one is forced and doesn't quite reach his eyes, one that is alarmingly dishonest; she quickly glances away.

She shrugs in place of an answer. "I'll see you later," she calls to him, before leaving.

She forces herself not to look back.

* * *

She doesn't owe Dick anything.

It's a thought that she heatedly tells herself over and over again when she goes on her next date with Jason, even while they're making out, but it's one that fails to acutely settle in. It's more than a little infuriating. Dick has never, not once, not legitimately, displayed any sort of romantic interest in Barbara. Barbara has never been a love-struck teenager, and she refuses to play one with Dick; she won't read into every tick and nuance of his face. She won't hang off his every word or try to find hidden meaning in his actions. She won't analyze his behavior like every little thing has an ulterior motive.

Problem is, though, that's _exactly_ what she's been doing for months now anyway.

It's second nature for Barbara to deconstruct his body-language and behavior. She does it without effort. She does it, despite herself.

_This cannot be healthy,_ she thinks to herself, half-incredulous.

"Barbara?" Jason says, pulling back from a kiss. "Earth to Barbara? Why do I feel like I don't have your full attention here?"

She snaps her gaze up, and forces a smile. "Sorry," she says, sheepishly, face turning red. "You've got my undivided attention. I promise."

* * *

A week later Gotham is cooling under the weight of an early winter and Barbara is taking an extra evening seminar on _Digital Forensics and Investigations_ that's making her write too many functional notes in the margins of her books. She's walking across the wet grass in front of the main library when she senses the weight of eyes on her back. She turns, and there's Dick, looking impeccably handsome in light slacks and a short-sleeved shirt, his mouth quirking into a smile as he spots her.

"What are you doing here?" she asks.

"What?" he defends himself, lightly. "Can't visit you for no reason?"

An hour later, they're ensconced at a table in the back of a nearby restaurant she's been to a couple of times, where she knows the bartender from one of her upper-division classes. She tells Dick about an idea she might have on improving security for their databases, and upgrading the hardware at her house so that she can constantly monitor police traffic at her place; it's something she couldn't have done while she was still living with her father, and it's one of the reasons, despite missing him insanely, she's glad for the move. Dick has an arm flung back over his booth, staring at her with a look she can't identify, but she has the feeling he's preoccupied with something because his gaze has barely shifted focus for a few minutes.

"What are you thinking?" she asks, realizing he hasn't heard the last two sentences she's said.

"That I should have kissed you when I had the chance," he says, bluntly, completely out of the blue.

Barbara freezes, going stark-rigid. For half a beat, she thinks she's heard wrong but his gaze is direct and unflinching, and as much as they sometimes flirt and tease each other, he's entirely too honest in nature, too aware of his actions, to ever joke about something like this. The air between them suddenly goes electric, and she can't name the feeling beyond a collection of sensations: fluttering stomach, quickening heartbeat, a thick taste of something too much like anticipation in the back of her throat. She blames her teenage hormones or all those times their friends have teased her about her relationship with Dick – _you guys are practically meant for each other_ – but there's a part of Barbara that can't help but want to respond to Dick's declaration by leaning forward.

A waitress stops by briefly to set two glasses of water on their table, but neither Dick nor Barbara seem to notice. It figures, of course, he'd say something like _that_ as matter-of-factly as ordering off the menu. He's the same when they spar. Evasive, until he's suddenly blunt and confrontational to the point of blinding.

As the waitress leaves, Barbara tugs her gaze away and the moment shatters. The words have left her stricken, but her analytical mind, a bane as much as a boon, conjures up a warning; she'd be lying through her teeth if she said she'd never thought about it, about Dick like _that_, but she's old enough now – or perhaps just _jaded_ enough – that she won't dive headlong into trouble just because it looks thrilling.

"Dick," she says, faintly, regretfully.

He smiles, but she's gotten too used to seeing the flicker of amusement in his eyes that means a genuine smile, and she hates that his face tightens instead. "I know," he tells her, in a soft knowing voice. It holds no anger, no resentment – only resignation. "I get it. You've got Jason now. But you asked what I was thinking, and so I told you."

Of course.

She's been asking for honesty all along, and he finally delivers with _this._

* * *

That way leads madness. That way leads heartache.

You think a girl would learn.

* * *

The rain catches in her hair and the racing streetlamps send it into sparkles, the halo of her red hair flashing brightly as the train rushes over the bridge-tracks. She stands at the edge of the open cargo door leading to a dead-drop of air, and she can hear Dick screaming through her earpiece, "Don't be _insane_!"

Barbara is inclined to agree that this isn't perhaps her best idea ever, but she doesn't have a chance to respond before she jumps from the freight train and plunges a hundred feet into the icy lake below. The splash isn't so much a splash as it is an exercise in pain, sharp stabs of freezing temperature water hitting her skin like a thousand knives, and the thin skin of ice frozen across the top barely slows her down. She bobs back to the surface for air, a desperate gasp.

Then she dives back under for the detonation device that Black Manta threw into the lake.

She can't stay underwater for more than another forty seconds, maybe fifty, before she's courting certain death – but it's the thought of an explosion going off on the train full of innocent people that propels Barbara to dive through the agonizing water. It's pitch-blackness beneath the surface, which would normally make Barbara frantic, but it turns out to be a fortunate thing because the detonator blinks with a red beep consistently every second; she spies it lying on the bottom of the lake floor because it's the only thing she _can_ see.

She dives, grabs it, and heads for the surface.

Except she can't find the hole she dived into; she can't find a place to come out. Panic sets in as she reaches the icy layer over her head, and she bangs on the glassy surface, frantic for air, for release, for reprieve from this pain. Someone's feet shadow above her, and a second later the ice is broken; someone grabs at her, and Barbara is too disoriented at first, too much in pain, to see who or how or why, but she's dragged across the frozen surface and away from the hole.

Barbara disarms the bomb with a flick of her trembling wrist, and struggles to tell Dick over the radio that _all's clear_, except she's coughing so much that she can't get a word out. Besides, the earpiece is ruined.

Her vision is too blurry. She looks up, and tries to make out the person that saved her life, but her savior is dressed from head to toe in a full black diving suit, including head gear and an oxygen mask that obscures the identity.

The mask is drawn back a second later to reveal Stephanie Brown.

"Okay," Barbara mutters, shivering, trying for wry and failing miserably. "You can tag along."

* * *

Stephanie starts a fire to warm her up and Barbara is sitting as close as possible to it without actually getting burned. Her Batgirl uniform is designed with heat insulation, but not for the extreme temperatures of a frozen lake. Stephanie had forced her to shed it within minutes of rescuing her, and has Barbara wrapped up in a thick woolen blanket. So Barbara sits, in nothing but her wet underwear and bra, red hair matted to her face, shivering and blinking distantly into the crackling fire. The blanket isn't good enough. Stephanie has one hand wrapped around her to share body warmth, but she's a petite fourteen-year old girl and Barbara worries about hypothermia.

She turns to Stephanie, and mumbles, "Thank you."

"Wow," Stephanie comments, feigning a shocked gasp. "Dear Diary, today was a red-letter day when I finally met the approval of Batgirl. I wonder if I should try my hand at the lottery and see if my luck holds for the night."

"Ha, ha," Barbara mutters.

"I was thinking of _Spoiler_ as a codename," Steph comments, absently.

Barbara doesn't respond, because she's not sure if Steph is serious or joking, and in either case, she's not in the condition to think of an appropriate response. Barbara wonders if this was what it was like for Batman all those years ago when there'd been some fifteen-year-old girl donning on a homemade batsuit and insisting on fighting for a cause under a borrowed trademark. When Bruce finally makes it back to Earth, Barbara might actually think about delivering a long-overdo apology.

Wally and Dick find them at the edge of the forest less than five minutes later. Barbara's fairly sure her reaction to Dick pulling a stunt similar to this would have ended in a lecture of some sort, perhaps something a bit… _threatening_. But Dick merely crosses his arms over his chest and gives her this _look_, and Barbara has to glance away.

It comes with the territory of being a superhero without the benefits of any superpowers. Sometimes, when she's on the team with the others like Wonder Girl and Miss Martian and Blue Beetle, even Wally, she envies them their powers. She knows, alongside Dick and Artemis and the handful of other superheroes that only have talent to their names, how hard and dangerous this life can be. She accepted that for herself, but from time to time, rather hypocritically, she finds herself detesting the risks that others take.

It takes an ego to be a superhero, though. Barbara is no exception. "I'm fine. I knew I could survive the fall."

"It wasn't the fall that concerned me," Dick answers, in a tone that would seem _whelmed_ to others, but certainly not to her. "It's the abrupt stop and the frozen pit of _death_ at the end."

Instead of responding to Dick's demanding glare, she says, "Is everyone all right?"

Wally answers this, "Yeah. And the cargo full of radioactive material is safe."

"B-Black Manta?" she asks, through chattering teeth.

Dick's jaw clenches. "He got away."

It's to be expected, but the anger does more to warm her than perhaps the nearby fire.

Barbara goes back to staring at the fire while Stephanie lifts to her feet to talk with Dick and Wally in hushed whispers. Normally Barbara would be insulted to be left out of the conversations but she can't bring herself to care at the moment. _God, she's cold._ A second later, Dick drops down beside her, into Stephanie's abandoned spot, and wraps an arm around her shoulder. Even though she knows she shouldn't, even if there's warning bells going off in her head and a chant of _Jason, Jason, Jason,_ she leans in without hesitation, greedily soaking up Dick's body warmth. She burrows into his circle of arms, and he smells like pine, like sweat, like that strange wax they sometimes put on their lips to protect them from the cold bite of Gotham wind. She can't stop shivering.

"Uh, should we leave you two alone?" Wally remarks, with an uplifted eyebrow.

"Just go find others," Dick tells them, in a warning sort of tone. "Tell Connor to bring the bioplane to the edge of the forest."

Steph nods. "All right, but no funny business while we're away, mister," she teases, and takes off.

"_Dog_," Wally offers, before speeding off.

There's a long beat of silence, before Dick comments, "We're never going to hear the end of this, are we?"

Barbara needs to give no other answer but a snort of derision. Zatanna, especially, will be filled with _I-told-you-so_ glee as soon as she gets wind of this story.

A second later, Dick's eyes are drawn to the uniform cast aside on some rocks. "Uh, Batgirl, are you at least wearing underwear underneath that blanket?"

She huffs an incredulous breath. "You think I normally go commando underneath my uniform?"

"A guy can only dream," he remarks.

She has enough energy to hit him, at least.

* * *

It isn't until later, much later, that Dick tells her that Aqualad had covertly intervened in her rescue, because when he'd seen her dive off the train he warmed the waters by a few degrees so that her hypothermia would not set in as quickly. Barbara had assumed that she'd been in the water no more than a minute or two, even if it felt like a lifetime, and is shocked to discover she'd been underneath the water for at least twice that.

All things considered, she should be dead.

"We've got problems," Dick declares. "We stopped them for getting hands on the nuclear material, but Artemis was able to pass Wally a microchip with information about the Reach's invasion plan. According to the specs, it's going to happen at the start of next year."

The start of next year, she thinks. That isn't even long enough for her to turn twenty.

It's like those movies Dick used to drag her to when they were kids (until he suddenly stopped when they hit high school). The one where the aliens invade and take over the Earth, and there's just a handful of survivors left behind to forge a resistance.

It isn't until later that night that Wally mentions something to her about an _exercise._ "It was pretty harsh," Wally explains sourly, when she presses him. "Batman put us through a team simulation when we were kids. Alien invasion-type scenario. But something happened with our minds and we thought it was… real. It became _way_ too real. Things went… sideways."

Which is a tacit way of saying it's the stuff of nightmares.

Dick looks away, saying nothing, and the entire group falls into a hush and she feels like she's inadvertently walked over someone's grave. Barbara doesn't ask anymore questions. It's already answered too many. She used to wonder why Dick had outgrown his love for those summer-blockbuster flicks, and now it makes a perverse sort of sense. She finds she's glad not to know what it feels like to suffer an alien invasion.

(She will, though.)

* * *

She's cancelled on two separate dates with Jason because of unexpected superhero business, so Barbara tries to make the extra effort for her next date. The following Friday, Barbara puts on a simple black dress and high heels and sits across from him in an upscale restaurant in the better part of Gotham. He's obviously trying to impress her, but it's a restaurant that both Bruce and Dick have frequently taken her to over the years. Jason has no way of knowing that, so Barbara adopts a white lie and pretends she's never been there before. The cat quickly jumps out of the bag when the maître d recognizes her and calls her forward by name. They get a special table, and Jason figures the reason out quickly enough because he's a clever sort of guy. The date starts off awkwardly because of that.

It only goes south from there.

Not even halfway through hors d'oeuvres, Barbara notices the TV in the background above the bar. The scroll on the bottom of the news that evening reveals that the Reach's new platform for PR includes administering vaccines across third world countries; G. Gordon Godfrey proclaims it "an admirable step in solidifying their friendly relations with the world." Barbara's eyes narrow, gaze transfixed on the screen. Vaccines are Stage Two in the Invasion plan, something to carry out catalysts that trigger meta-genes in ordinary humans.

She rises from the chair. "Could you excuse me for a second?"

Jason blinks. "Something wrong?"

"No, I'm—" she drops her napkin onto the table, picking up her purse. "Little Girl's Room," she tells him.

She's halfway out to the lobby before she gets Dick on the phone with one of her patented secure lines. "Are you watching the news?"

"Yeah," Dick answers, sounding tense. "This wasn't supposed to happen until at least another month."

* * *

November 15th is a red-letter day, but it begins with a whimper and not with a bang.

(Actually, to be technical, it begins with the show tune ringtone on her cell.)

Three things happen that throw Barbara's world askew. The first: someone from her dad's department calls late that evening and that's never a good sign. A stark sinking filling hits the pit of her stomach, and she slowly answers. _Your father's been injured in the line of duty_, they say, and that's all Barbara hears before white noise and fear sets in. She doesn't ask for many details; she'll get that at the hospital. She rummages through her purse to find her keys with shaking fingers and takes off as fast as she can for Gotham General Memorial Hospital.

She has no idea how he found out, but Dick's there at the ICU when she arrives. "What happened?" she asks him.

But the hospital staff only gives out information to family, so she has to track down someone that works there. She gets the vaguest of vague answers. "He was shot once in the abdomen," the nurse tells her. "The doctors are with him now."

It isn't until they're alone, until the empty void of the waiting room seems suffocating and bleak, that she voices her question to Dick again. "What happened?"

"Your father stumbled upon Blank Manta's operations on the east docks of the City," Dick says, painfully. "I wasn't there, but—I'm sorry, Barbara. This should never have happened."

She sits down numbly on the hard, plastic chair.

Dick settles in beside her and holds her hand. They sit like that for a very, very long time.

* * *

The second thing to throw Barbara's world into a tailspin that night: she breaks up with Jason.

The idea had never even occurred to her before today. It's nothing even dramatic. She should be a little curious about how _un-dramatic_ it is, actually, considering they'd been dating for months now in a serious relationship, but the real truth is she really isn't thinking at all. Her mind stalls when she sees her father, post-surgery. There's a half-dozen monitors surrounding him, and the sterile smell of the room makes Barbara feel nauseous. The doctors don't know when he's going to wake, or even if he will, but they tell her the odds on permanent brain damage if he doesn't wake up within the next forty-eight hours.

She can have a good cry later, but at the hospital, Barbara just sits numbly in those insufferable chairs and counts down the hours to forty-eight. Dick sticks by her the entire time, and it proves to be the only thing tethering her to reality. She never even thinks to call Jason; it never even _occurs_ to her. But he shows up sometime before midnight because he probably heard it on the news or something.

When he finds her sitting with Dick, he stops short. She's slower on the uptake tonight, but it's obvious Jason is hurt – _stung._ He covers it admirably, and Barbara quietly makes introductions for both men. (She's avoided having both men in the same room, for obvious reasons.) They're both tall, both gorgeous, both have strong builds though in dissimilar ways. The pressure in the air is obvious until Dick quietly excuses himself to get some coffee, and Jason is left standing in the hallway with her.

They sit and talk for a while, but Barbara can't answer half his questions honestly, especially not the ones about who did this to her father. She pleads ignorance, even though a big part of her is struggling not to rush out of the hospital doors to don on her Batgirl uniform and exact some form of justice on the people she _knows_ are responsible for her father's condition. Jason holds her hand and offers words of comfort, but they're not worth half of Dick's comfort because Jason can't possibly know the dangers of everything that's happening.

It hits her in a slow wave, like ocean water lapping onto sands and erasing footprints. She hasn't been entirely oblivious to the warning signs; she realizes what she's been doing to Jason the entire time they've known each other. That she's lied to him about practically everything in her life, and if there's one thing she's learned in the last year, you don't treat a person you love like that. Jason deserves more than that. He deserves honesty and loyalty, and if she can't give that to him, than she at least owes him a clean break.

"Jason," she says, never one to put off bad conversations. "I think we need to talk."

Dick returns twenty minutes later with a fresh cup of coffee for her, and a spare one for Jason.

But by then, Jason is long gone.

* * *

The third and final thing to occur on November 15th, the one that puts all others to shame, is this: the world begins to end.

It begins with the crumbling of brick and plaster, actually. The hospital starts to shake, and at first Barbara thinks _earthquake_, even though Gotham City hasn't had a big one of those in the last hundred and fifty years. The building shakes, just a quiet jolt, almost white noise at first. But Dick and Barbara are alert and up on their feet in no time. They look out the window, and there, the hushed disintegration builds because every brick, every sheet of glass, every tile of marble starts to tremble.

Outside, she can see dozens of small Reach spaceships drop out of hyperspace and halt across the skyline. It's a fleet of ships, all nearly camouflaged by white light until they draw to a halt.

"It's happening," Dick breathes in realization, shoulders squaring off. "The Invasion is starting right now."

Barbara stands beside him, looking out the window in a harsh moment of shock. They've been planning for this for months now, trying their best to prevent exactly this moment from happening. They've done countermeasures, infiltration, sabotage and offensive attacks. Aqualad has lied, cheated, and fought his way through the ranks of his father's militia in order to gain a foothold; Artemis _died_, and was reborn as a villain she's struggled her entire adolescence not to become. They've orchestrated one mission after another with secret agendas and hidden intel. Lies, after lies, after secrets and falsehoods, and the world still wakes to a tremble one dark November night.

"This…" Dick says, eyes anguished, "this wasn't supposed to happen yet."

Barbara looks back across the hall, where her father still lies comatose. She won't be able to see him wake, she realizes. Within minutes, the television will be telling them that this incursion has spread all across the world: she suspects New York will be first. Philadelphia, Tokyo, New Delhi, Brazil, San Francisco, all of Italy. She can already predict it coming.

"C'mon," she says, tugging Dick's hand. "It's not over yet. We've got work to do."

* * *

They say it's always darkest before the dawn.

Barbara hopes there is truth in this.

* * *

tbc…


	3. Chapter 3

**AN:** Okay, so I know this was supposed to be the last chapter, but the length is just absurdly long and it works better as two separate chapters. Apologies about the delay. I had a family wedding that sucked up my entire life.

* * *

The Reach start corralling people like cattle.

Over the next few days, citizens start seeking sanctuary, pouring out of their houses in waves. The smaller alien spacecrafts, a type of jet with tele-beam technology, are often seen running routine sweeps of the cities. They're making house-calls. Looting starts up among the masses. Scared families with hastily thrown together suitcases and fear-filled eyes take to the streets. It's like the whole world shudders and breathes in as one while the Reach spread out throughout the globe.

Barbara spends most of the time in damage control, attempting to usher as many people to safety as possible. Dick sends out teams of three to the farthest reaches of the world, and Barbara ends up working with Stephanie and Tim on organizing a massive operation in the upper east coast of the US. The first priority is getting people to safety; then they can execute the next stages of rebellion.

In the meantime, the Reach utilize minimum lethal force in gaining control, probably because they don't want to diminish their experimental gene pool, but for every life lost Barbara feels the aching burden of accountability. It was their duty and obligation to stop this invasion from happening, and even if their efforts had been seen as, charitably, a snowball's chance in hell, a pebble in the face of a mountain – Barbara didn't become who she is and don on the cape because she consoles herself with the notion that causalities are "small." There are no small causalities. Every life lost feels like a lash across her back, and she knows Dick feels it even more acutely.

It's almost pathetic how easily the Reach take over Earth. NORAD falls without anyone even blinking an eye, and the US military force engages in a few skirmishes before the Reach unleash a massive computer virus and EMP bombs across seventeen large cities, and the President comes on the television briefly to announce an unconditional surrender. The rest of the world follows after, first France, then the Middle East and Asia and the line of European countries start tripping over themselves on who capitulates to the Reach first.

After which, the TV channels all broadcast a barren emergency broadcast message, and the world is plunged into anarchy as alarm grows. More people are taken. More nations start panicking. When the TV finally comes back on, the Reach have taken control of everything – the media, the leaders, the entire world.

It's as bad as anything they feared.

* * *

It's been a busy day and even more harried night.

"Got the rest of the supplies!" Steph hollers. "If we book it, we can make it out of here within the hour."

Barbara nods. They've been coordinating with Gotham PD to set up a response site in the Gotham Academy facility. She walks by her old haunts and feels a strange sense of déjà vu wash over her, but mostly, it's surreal to see her former high school transformed so much. Her father is still in his coma, tucked away in the quiet east wing near the chem labs where few know he's there, but she's been working closely with detective Renee Montoya under the guise of Batgirl and they've been managing well enough. After a few hours or relocating, Barbara thinks she has everything nearly set up. She carries bags and boxes, and listens to the kids rampage up and down the gymnasium like miniature elephants. She double-checks on the generators, then places a box of medical supplies in the kitchen.

Dick and Barbara have been preparing for this for a while so the school is actually well stocked. First aid kits, flashlights, working communication in walkie-talkies and functioning cell phone, food, bottled water, extra warm clothing, emergency supplies including tools, bedding, towels and plastic sheeting – all bought by Wayne Enterprises. It's still not going to be enough in the long run, but for the moment, it'll do.

She avoids visiting her father's bedside for as long as possible, but before she leaves, she slips quietly into his room and stands watch. She loses track of time. Detective Montoya finds her like that sometime around midnight, and if she thinks it odd that Batgirl is watching so gravely over Commissioner Gordon's bedside, she doesn't comment on it.

"He's stronger than he looks," Renee says. "He'll come out of this thing. In the meantime, we've got officers that'll lay down their lives to protect him."

The Reach are collecting hospital patients all across the globe. _Experimenting on the wounded or sick, _the rumor is.

Barbara fights down a rush of nausea, and turns to Renee. "Good luck," she says.

"Right back at you, Batgirl."

* * *

The new team HQ, a quiet bunker sixteen levels below the surface in a military base somewhere in Colorado, makes her miss the Cave like a missing limb. It has none of the warmness, none of the history, and all the same stale air. Well after midnight, when Barbara finds herself keyed-up and wide-awake, she wanders out of the sickbay and walks through the base. She quickly winds her way to the command room where Dick is going over reams of paper with a pen clenched between his teeth. She walks across to Dick, and finds him so absorbed in his work that he barely even registers her approach. He has a five o-clock shadow, and two empty cups of coffee within arm's reach. There are strategic maps of the United States sprawled over two different tables, and Barbara can see blocks of Reach strongholds all highlighted in red. The Justice League have managed to maintain hold of most of the west coast, but there are still small pockets of weaknesses.

Barbara stares at the outline near the waters where Gotham City is drawn in greens and blues and that horrible, horrible red. Her comatose father now rests near the backroom of a high school gymnasium. The place isn't in a redzone, but it's only a matter of time. She drops a hand onto Dick's shoulder without even thinking about it, and he looks up to catch her gaze.

Wally stumbles in on them like that, and she means _literally. _"Hey," he slurs, shit-faced drunk as he rights himself. "Aww, look at that. Young love."

Barbara pauses, thrown. As a speedster, it takes an alarming amount of alcohol to work on Wally's metabolism, but clearly, judging by the state of the near-empty bottle of Jack Daniels in his hands, Wally has been making the effort. It's been nine days since the Invasion, and they haven't heard a thing from Aqualad or Artemis. Barbara doesn't know what to think of that, but Wally has been spiraling further and further into desperation and despair with each passing day.

Dick winces just looking at him. "Wally, man," he says, rising. "What are you doing?"

It takes the combined effort of both of them to get Wally into bed that night. Things have settled down between the two boys over the last few days; it's not, in Barbara's expert opinion, the same steadfast friendship that once stood tall, but _something _must've happened recently because the inexhaustible tension between the two has finally dissolved. Wally still worries over Artemis to the exclusion of nearly everything else, but he no longer holds Dick solely responsible. Maybe because he sees how the Reach are tearing the world apart; maybe because he knows Dick tears himself apart just as much. Barbara doesn't know what happened to change his way of thinking, and she won't push the subject unless Dick or Wally bring it up themselves.

Knowing both boys, that's likely never going to happen.

"You know," Wally says groggily, before drifting off to sleep, "Artemis always rooted for you two to get together."

* * *

Dick disappears in the middle of the night, and she goes searching for him back at the Wayne Manor to check up on him because that scene back there with Wally must have been brutal on him. She expects to find him going over logs again. He's been locked in a holding pattern of reviewing intel and trying to figure out the Reach's weakness. Short answer: they're aren't any. At least that Barbara can figure out, and she's been looking at this thing from all angles. Their best bet of fighting the Reach had been before the invasion, but now that there's hundreds of smaller ships and a half a dozen motherships across Earth, she isn't sure how to fight the numbers.

They need a miracle.

Alfred stops her before she can make it down to the batcave, redirecting her to his room. "I strongly suggested that he get some rest before I became obstinate about the matter. Master Bruce has taught him some rather unappealing habits."

She frowns. Dick is starting to worry her a little; she knew he'd take the invasion badly, but perhaps she underestimated just how _personally _he'd take the failure. A cloud of rebuke has fallen over him, as if he's holding himself solely responsible for an alien invasion, and it's a type of accountability and darkness that sat better on Bruce more than it ever did on Dick.

Bruce. What she wouldn't give for Batman's guidance right about now. Or Superman and Wonder Woman and Martian Man, or… any help, really. They need all the help they can get.

Alfred doesn't say a word when she makes it down the hallway towards Dick's room. "Dick?" she calls out, easing open his door.

Dick is nowhere to be seen. His room, like any other in Wayne Manor, is opulent and large. It has the standard décor, but he's added in his own personal touch here and there. Exercise equipment is strewn across the expanse. There's a pile of books on the bureau underneath his large flatscreen TV, a _Flying Graysons _poster that's over a decade old hung up on the far wall, and just two or three other framed photos on the corner table near the window. One is of his parents, another of Wally, Artemis and Dick, and the last one – she's surprised to find – features herself at the last Christmas party. She's giving Dick a kiss on the cheek underneath mistletoe.

She stops at the edge of the door, and frowns. _Where is he?_

* * *

She finds him in the Batcave, unsurprisingly. "You better hope Alfred doesn't find you down here," she teases, pulling back her mask so that it pools in a hood behind her.

But then he turns, and it's as if someone has ruptured her windpipe because he looks _devastated_, eyes filled with grief and the stark look of guilt. The sight tears right through her.

"Babs," he exhales, roughly. "Babs, I—" he trails off, words of no use.

She's never seen him look so lost, but she's clearly caught him in a moment when his guard is completely down. She's across the space in a flash, and she's not even sure how it happens, but suddenly she's holding him while he crumbles against her like there's suddenly no strings holding him up anymore; he drags in air like his lungs have collapsed, and his eyes are shining with unshed tears. The sight throws her. Through thick and thin, through death and defeat, Dick has always managed to maintain a level of calm – of _traught_ – and she wonders what triggered this emotional avalanche tonight before she glances up at the monitors behind him and sees footage of a dozen civilians lying in a mass grave. _Insubordinate populations must be culled, _the closed captions on the news reads.

The Reach are sending a global message.

She closes her eyes when Dick makes this sickly noise from the back of his throat. "Dick. _Dick. _Stop. Breathe."

Sharp air whistles past the constricted muscles of his throat, and she repeats the command, coaxing him to breathe in and out in a semblance of normalcy. (It's entirely an illusion, she knows.)

"Christ, I screwed us all over," he chokes out. "This wasn't supposed to happen."

She closes her eyes again. The truth is a part of her has been expecting this moment for days. He's held himself together remarkably well under months of inexhaustible strain, but the last few days have chipped away at his cool exterior and she's been holding her breath waiting for the dam to break.

She puts a hand on his cheek, brings his unfocused eyes to meet hers. "Dick," she says, and she's surprised by the emotion she feels because it's almost…_anger. _"Dick, this is not your fault."

There's a particular tone he's been conditioned to respond to, and mostly it's something that only Batman has ever managed, but she finds herself replicating the commanding tone without even trying.

"You did everything you could—"

"I could have done more," he insists, stubbornly. "I _should _have."

"What? What more could you have done?" she demands.

She hears his breath catch slickly in his throat. He doesn't have an answer to that and neither does she. It's a question they've been asking themselves nonstop since the invasion began, and the fact of the matter is, this invasion might have been pretty much unstoppable from the get-go. It pisses her off that he's holding himself accountable for it, then. Whether he knew about the invasion for months or not, whether he'd had plans in place to prevent it, and failed – he doesn't deserve to be scapegoat for an oncoming storm, not even in his own head. The men in her life have always had an ego the size of the moon, even if well-intentioned, but this is one of those few occasions where it frustrates her more than words can describe.

"Then all of it was for nothing," he says to her. "This entire _year_ I've spent lying to my friends and family. Wally's resentment, the months I had to watch you with Jason—" she jerks back, because the declaration of jealousy floors her in a way she isn't expecting, though she probably _should_; Dick is already moving on to list the next item in his manifesto, "The danger to Artemis and Aqualad. I destroyed one relationship after another for this, and it was for nothing."

Her throat feels tight with emotion, and she can't even identify what it is. "The hell you did. I'm still here, aren't I?" He holds her gaze for a lengthy beat, and she realizes what that says about her, about _them_. "I know what you did, Dick. I know precisely what've you've been doing, and after everything, I still trust you. More than anyone else in the world."

She realizes the full weight of truth only after saying the words. Is that foolishness? To trust him so much after knowing how far he can go in lying to her?

Or is that just consequences of… _love?_

The moment is charged with emotions, the sort of reckless clash of his desperation and her reassurance. And then, something happens that she can't predict: he _breaks_, and not in the way she expects. His mouth suddenly crashes heavy on hers, hot and demanding. He opens her mouth with his own, tangling their tongues, robbing the breath right from her body. The kiss is like sensory-overload rushing over her. His hands are everywhere, but they quickly settle on tugging frantically at the fabric of her cape to pull her closer, and then she responds, then she moves towards him, finding her hands fisting around his shirt in need. She doesn't just respond, she breathes in the kiss and parries back every advance he makes with one of her own. They've always been well-matched in maneuvers, her and Dick, but this is different. It's completely unthinking. It's an exercise in instinct.

It feels damningly right for a girl who prides herself on thinking everything through.

When he pulls back, he stares at her, gaze searching for her reaction. "Is that… do you—"

"Shut up, Dick," she tells him, and pulls him back to her for another kiss.

* * *

Even as it's happening, she realizes it might be a mistake.

She can't tell you why she does it, only that it's more her instigation than his; she leads and he follows as she tugs him up, and it's probably fueled by a desperate need of receiving comfort as much as giving it, but she can't even define it that clearly. All she knows is that it feels right while being just a little bit _wrong_, and it moves faster than it should. It's frenzied and rushed the first time. He yields control the entire time, but Barbara climbs on top and she can't stop herself from setting a reckless pace, hips slanting in a frantic staccato and breath panting over his collarbone. Her hair falls in a red curtain framing his face and he breathes her name like it's a reverent sort of prayer; he kisses her with a marked intent that makes her absolutely _crazed_, and it's a state of too much emotion and too little said that passes between them in the hours before dawn.

The second time, he keeps her hands pinned above her head, laying heavy over her as they tangle up his expensive silk sheets. They finally make it back up to his bedroom and she's thankful that they don't run into Alfred or Tim on the way, but the truth is the thought of anyone else occupying the entire _planet_is suddenly a far off consideration. His fingers dig into her wrists, and he feels a perfect sort of heavy that she can't even describe but it's one that she's never felt with any other man including Jason.

"_Feel so good,_" he murmurs into her skin, "_wanted this for so long,_" and she arches up to silence him with a kiss.

The final time, it is achingly slow and long, their urgency and burning possessiveness temporarily satisfied. Already, he's learned what she wants and craves, and it intimidates her to realize that there isn't a single aspect of Barbara Gordon and her life that Dick Grayson doesn't now know.

He might even know too much.

* * *

In the morning, she finally acts on thought rather than impulse.

She sneaks out of the Wayne Manor while Dick slumbers. She completely misses the morning debrief with the team. Stephanie and Cassandra both call her on her cell, but she lets it go to voicemail. The aftermath of spending the night with Dick feels weightier than any other _walk-of-shame _that Barbara has ever committed in her life. Despite her affections, or any of his, what she has with Dick is special and the thought of screwing that friendship up, even if it means a chance at something more, isn't one she wants to entertain in the middle of an apocalypse. She should know better. Last night had felt right, but it had been driven by reassurance and desperation, and neither emotion is particularly conducive to starting a relationship.

Besides, she knows Dick's reputation. More than that, she knows the man. He's gone home with women before and then never called them again. Zatanna and Rocket have both regaled her with stories of their breakups with him, and while it's all amicable now, there's only so many tears spilt over a guy that Barbara can see shed before she takes home a clear message.

She can't avoid him for long, though. The world is still ending. So she uses Zeta-tubes to travel to the team HQ. She first catches sight of him on the third sublevel just as the elevators open for him, and for a brief second that stretches out for eternity, their gazes are locked on each other as if the entire world doesn't exist around them. She sees snatches of confusion in his eyes. She feels a strange little heart palpation that's makes it feel like her heart has jumped up into her throat.

She's the quickest to break the gaze and walk away.

Barbara lingers in quiet uncertainty the entire day and finds any excuse she can to avoid him in the hallways. By midday she's thankful to get sent out to escort a group of refugees to safe harbor, but when she makes it back, it's to find that Dick has assigned himself as her partner for the night's patrol and that others have somehow noticed the tension. No one says anything directly to her, but Barbara's too perceptive herself to miss the gossip. She thinks about what people must be saying about them behind their back now that they've noticed something amiss, then realizes it isn't anything they probably haven't said a dozen times before.

Dick, apparently, thinks it's funny. "So," he says, lightly, "About last night. Wally started up a _secret _betting pool on how long it'll take us to go public."

She likes to think both of them realize what's happening, what this _means_, and it scares him as much as it scares her. His laughter, therefore, isn't amusing to her at all. "That's not funny," she tells him, in a warning sort of tone. (It's a relief to be able to get angry at him, actually. She doesn't know what that means.) "Are people really betting on that?"

"I told Wally to put down two days," is Dick's answer.

She glares at him. He smirks in response. She wonders if his amusement is mostly for show. Knows, deep down, that it is. Dick isn't a man low on self-assurance or esteem, but she can read the anxiety in his eyes, the way his arms are folded tightly over his chest. Jokes or not, he's being more confrontational about this than she'd been expecting. His response is also rather telling in that it tells her that Dick's thought about this. About telling others. About what happened last night.

Barbara looks away and uses her grappling hook to soar from one skyscraper to the next. "This isn't the time or place," she tells him, as she lands on a gargoyle statue.

Dick follows her, pressing, "We can avoid talking about it, but don't you think that's a little ridiculous? We slept together, Babs."

She shushes him, almost violently. "Nightwing, I swear to god if you don't keep your voice down I will—"

"Who's going to hear us?" he says, getting a little exasperated, "and it isn't the end of the world… well, okay, maybe it _is_, but not because we had sex."

He is utterly infuriating.

There's a beat of silence. "Was it a pity-fuck?" he asks, strained.

The question throws her so much she whirls around to face him. "What? No! God, no, Dick."

"Is it Jason?" Dick asks next.

She straightens. "I broke up with him already. You know that."

"Then what?" he demands, losing his cool. "I thought last night was something…_something._ But you've been avoiding me all day and you're acting pissed off like _I_ was the one who ran out on _you. _I left my copy of English-to-Barbara translations at home, so how about you just spell it out for me as clear as possible. What's wrong?"

The strong winds make a whining noise, and her cape flutters about her. She should spit it out pointblank before she loses her nerve. _It was a mistake. _She knows Dick would require no further words than those four, but she can also imagine how those words would hang suspended in the frigid air; how his face would close off. It always does when she wounds him in a way he can't control. She stalls at the idea of him turning around to leap away, because she doesn't want that. Not really.

She doesn't know what she wants.

(That might be the biggest lie she's ever told herself.)

"Hey," he says softly, walking up to her. She doesn't know what he reads off her expression, but he gently runs the pad of his thumb over her cheek, and such an intimate gesture would have seemed out of place just twenty-four hours ago. A shiver runs down her spine at his touch. "Let's just take it one step at a time, all right?"

_I swear to God, Richard Grayson,_ she doesn't say aloud, _you break my heart and I'll break your kneecaps._

* * *

Unsurprisingly, an alien invasion doesn't leave much room for them to figure out their budding relationship, whatever it is.

The next day, there's fighting.

Wondergirl crash-lands next to her with an _oomph. _Barbara has a few seconds to react before a figure comes hurdling at her from behind, and Barbara turns, hoping to use the momentum of her attacker against him and vault him into the air, but then she realizes she has no chance of taking down anything that can take down Cassandra. Instead, she dodges some blast at the last second and goes for cover. The assailant runs right passed her, unable to slow down, and then knocks himself unconscious when he hits the wall headfirst.

"Well," Cassandra remarks, "At least they're not clever."

Barbara helps her to her feet, then winces when Cassandra, called Wondergirl for a reason, uses a bit too much of her strength in the grip. Barbara shakes her hand loose and Cassandra offers a contrite expression, apologizing profusely. They look around. The place is a disaster.

_'Batgirl? Wondergirl?'_ M'gann's voice drifts over their telepathic-bond. '_You all right?'_

_'Affirmative_,' Barbara answers, '_But there are still two members of the Reach's army out there somewhere. Be on the look out.'_

_'Understood. Alpha Team, move out,' _M'gann orders.

A second later, Stephanie lands silently next to both girls, dressed up in her newly fashioned costume, a head-to-toe black suit that she uses when being _Spoiler_. She holds up a hand. '_Guys, we've got more bad news. Queen Bee isn't the one here. Aqualad's right hand gal is here instead.'_

_'Tigress?'_both Barbara and M'gann say at once, in excitement.

The startled declaration gets raised eyebrows from both Stephanie and Cassandra, and Barbara doesn't even need to see M'gann's face to recognize the sheepish quality that taints her voice. '_Right. Spoiler and Wondergirl, fall back to retreat positions. Batgirl, join me in the eastern quad to pursue Tigress. We can try to acquire enemy intel.'_

The part where Artemis will be freely _giving _them said intel is left unsaid.

Everyone moves out, and Barbara joins M'gann at the edge of the building in better spirits than how they'd started off this mission. "Thank god," M'gann says to Barbara, secretly. "I was worried the worst had happened to her."

She spoke perhaps a bit too soon, because the next thing either girls know, Artemis – without the visage that had camouflaged her as Tigress all these months – goes sailing through the air and lands with a hard, abrupt crash. She skids across the cement floor, and then coughs up blood.

"Artemis!" M'gann screams, before she can stop herself.

Enemy fire opens up.

Barbara tackles M'gann to the ground as a barrage of bullets hit the wall above their heads. She has no idea what's going on, but it can't be good if Artemis has been unmasked. She looks over and spies the other woman still lying unmoving in the same position she landed in, and Barbara can only pray that Artemis is knocked unconscious and not… something _worse._

Two seconds later, a different sort of blast joins the fray. A sharp surge of ice-water jets through the air, pinning their assailants to the wall. Barbara turns to find Aqualad emerging from the other end of the room, shirt torn open and a bloodied blade made of ice at his side. M'gann dives into action before Barbara can recover from the shock, and the two former-teammates join forces in protecting Artemis' prone body on the floor.  
By the end of it, between Aqualad's icy-barrage and M'gann's telepathic attack, Barbara barely has to lift a finger. The Reach's small incursion is defeated within seconds.

Artemis groans as she comes back to consciousness. "Did we get 'em?" she slurs.

"Yes," Aqualad says, gravely. "But unfortunately, we have failed to stop word from spreading about your true identity."

* * *

It takes roughly only a minute for Barbara to get the gist of it, because Stephanie and Cassandra are still outside waiting. Apparently Artemis' cover had been blown sometime during their most recent op, and instead of allowing his friend to suffer, Aqualad showed his true colors to his father. What had transpired was a full day of battle, after which they'd both found their way across the country to a place where they knew Dick would send a team in to rendezvous.

"Go find a place to hide," M'gann instructs. "We'll pick you up later."

"Here," Barbara says, writing down the number of one of her secure lines. "Call by the end of the night."

"Where are we supposed to go?" Aqualad says. "The Reach know we are double agents, and the team still thinks of me as the enemy."

"I know a place," Artemis cuts in, before anyone else can say anything.

"Where?"

"We go to my family," Artemis answers, looking pale. "I heard intel that my sister is holding out with my mom back in the boroughs of Gotham City. If we can make it to them, we'll have safe harbor for the night."

"Are you sure you'll be safe there?" M'gann asks.

Artemis grimaces. "Assuming neither one of them kills me on sight for being alive, yeah."

Barbara winces in sympathy. "Call when you reach safety."

M'gann gives each one of them one last hug, and then joins Barbara in rushing out the door.

* * *

Wally hollers with glee when he gets the phone call. "_Babe!_" he exclaims with relief. "It's so good to hear your voice."

"You too, Wally," Artemis says, sounding choked up. "We're at the old ironworks district on the east side of the city. 1135 Pierre Street—"

She's barely finished saying the sentence before Wally has zoomed away, and the phone clatters to the floor in his wake. Barbara exchanges a look with M'gann and Conner, but Dick merely grins and shakes his head silently. He picks up the phone just in time to hear Wally's arrival on the other end of Gotham City, and Artemis' resulting intake of breath.

There's a series of indiscernible noises after that – something crashing, hushed whispers and the sound of someone crying – before Aqualad comes on the phone. "Wally and Artemis are… _preoccupied _at the moment."

Everyone grins, even Conner.

"Yeah," Dick says, "What about you? You all right?"

Aqualad pauses. "We have found a haven for the night with Artemis' mother and sister, a miracle given I nearly lost my head as soon as I was spotted. My cover is blown, Nightwing. Not only with my father and the Reach, but I was unable to stop Cheshire from speaking with Roy. Word will soon spread of my deception. You'll have questions to answer on your end."

Dick closes his eyes, then marshals his resolve again with a quick steadying breath. "You two are safe. That's all that matters."

"A hearty declaration," Aqualad says, "But we both know that isn't true."

Dick shakes his head. "Talk to Red Arrow. You'll be able to convince him to keep quiet for the moment. He's your best friend."

"_Was,_" Aqualad says, rather tiredly. "It will not be easy."

Dick opens his mouth to say something, then thinks better of it. Eventually, he settles on, "I'm sorry none of this worked out, Kaldur. You've sacrificed so much, and it was for nothing."

There's a pause, before Aqualad says in a weighty voice, "Maybe it was not entirely for nothing."

* * *

Kaldur's plan is crazy.

It's outrageous.

It's outright _suicidal._

"It might be the only way to defeat the Reach," Dick declares, grimacing.

* * *

Barbara gives up trying to locate Dick two hours after he vanishes into thin air, absently muttering unclean language under her breath because there _are_impressionable youth around. Still, she's getting a little annoyed with his disappearing acts lately, especially when they have things to plan. She sits at the computer console and tries to find matches.

The first step in the plan requires twelve volunteers. Two teams of six.

They've got eight already: Barbara, Dick, Aqualad, Artemis, Wally, Connor, M'gann and Tim. That leaves four more volunteers. Not just any volunteers, but the plan requires six of the total needed have to be females that meet the Reach's desired specifications. Mainly, ones without their meta-genes activated. Volunteers such as that, with the capability of completing the mission successfully? Barbara can think of two, _maybe _three women off the top of her head. The majority of the women on base already have their meta-genes activated. M'gann might be able to alter her DNA and appearance to fool the Reach, but that still leaves a frustratingly small number to choose from. There's Stephanie, possibly. And Artemis says she might be able to pull her mother and sister on board, but Barbara doesn't know what's more problematic: trying to pull off this ludicrous scheme with a wheelchair bound former con, or a con that's not even former by any recognizable standards.

Who else can they recruit?

She fails to think up any solid leads, at least ones that don't leave a bad flavor in her mouth. Sometime after midnight, she reluctantly goes to rest in the small room reserved for her and Stephanie. There's still been no sign of Nightwing. She goes to bed angry, and wakes up groggy when there's a gentle rustle of movement in the room.

Dick is standing over her, obscured by shadows.

"What…" Barbara mumbles, sitting up slowly and then glancing over to Stephanie's bed across the room. The younger girl is blissfully asleep. "What's wrong, Dick?"

He stands over her, motionless. "What if this goes badly? We can't lose _everyone _on this mission."

Barbara shakes her head and rubs sleep out of her eyes. "We've got two weeks to train. We'll get it right."

"With who?" Dick demands, softly. "Who can we trust to pull this off? Artemis' mother is in a wheelchair."

"That's no reason to discount her," Barbara says, frowning.

"And Stephanie's only fourteen."

"You were younger when you set out to save the world," she remarks, wryly.

"This isn't the same," Dick insists, in that hard sort of voice he gets when there's no joking around with him.

Dick always jokes; it's one of two default settings for him. But even in the shadows, she can see the stiffness and tension in his body, a posture of skilled and refined elegance etched into the hard lines of his body. He wears grace like a second skin, but the truth is she knows he works hard at seeming so effortless. His eyes always betray his concentration. His muscles are _always _coiled tight with enough tension that it feels like a rubberband stretched thin, about ready to snap. It occurs to her that there's nothing straightforward about Dick. He's all slippery lines and sharp angles, and he will never let anyone close enough to crack that veneer. Maybe not even her.

His sense of responsibility is simultaneously one of the most annoying and admirable traits about him.

(People have remarked the same of her.)

"Dick," she says. "We have no choice."

He's silent for a long beat, so still and motionless that she wouldn't even be able to tell he was breathing. "Maybe you shouldn't go."

She sucks in a breath. "Don't even think about trying to talk me out of this."

"We need someone to stay back and lead the others if we fail."

"Good," Barbara declares, sharply. "You can volunteer for that job, but _I'm_going."

Dick sits down beside her on the thin scratchy mattress, dropping his voice into a whisper, "First Artemis and Aqualad. Now you. I can't stand the idea of—" he breaks off, then confides, rather hopelessly, "I wish it was only me taking on this risk."

She reaches for him. "It's scary how much you remind me of Batman sometimes."

He flinches, like she hit him, then burrows into the folds of her arms without hesitation. She finds herself pressed back against the thin mattress, bearing the full weight of his body on top of her, and for a beat, she thinks it's going to turn sexual. They've only spent one night together. It's a series of memories she often replays in her head at random moments of the day, usually when Dick – intentionally, no doubt – brushes by her so close she can smell his aftershave. It's a heady sort of aroma, drawing out an instinctual reaction of lust. She feels like a schoolgirl with her first major crush, which is more than a little ridiculous because she's a grown woman with a history of dating. It makes her feel reckless; she shouldn't enjoy that so much.

But Steph is asleep across the room, so she doesn't have a lot of options. She just kisses him once, twice, long and drawn out, and then rearranges them so that she can tuck herself alongside his lean body. He releases a sigh, half of frustration and half of respite – because he's thinking the same thing she is: _We need privacy. _It's not in the cards.

"Go to sleep," she instructs, gently.

She doubts he manages even a wink throughout the night, though.

* * *

Wally wins the bet when Stephanie discovers them tangled up in blankets the next morning. It's rather pathetic that two individuals such as them, so versed in keeping secrets, apparently can't hide a relationship worth a damn.

"Don't feel bad," Zatanna teases, with a knowing grin. "It'd never last anyway. Dick is extremely high on the PDA scale."

* * *

"Seriously?" Barbara moans. "Selina Kyle? Can't we think up anyone else?"

"Can you?" Dick says to her, with a perceptive smirk. "Steph, Cheshire and Paula make three out of four. We need another capable woman we can trust. Can you think of anyone better?"

"You said the word _trust _in there. Question asked, question answered."

He sighs. "You really think Selina is going to turn us over to the Light or the Reach?"

She doesn't, actually. Doesn't mean Barbara has to like this idea.

"Stop pouting," Dick says.

"I am not _pouting._"

"Uh-uh," Dick goes. "Anyone ever tell you that you're cute when you're upset—"

She has to shove him away because it's exasperating how much he's enjoying her discomfort. He's always gotten along better with Catwoman than Barbara ever has, because Barbara has never had the patience to figure out which version of Selina Kyle she'd face: villain, dubious ally, or sometimes paramour of Batman. Nowadays, Selina has been scarce around Gotham because of the invasion. In fact, to be honest, Barbara hasn't seen much of Catwoman since Bruce disappeared into space with the other five leaguers. They don't even know where to look, precisely.

It takes a full day of searching, and she'd be more annoyed about that except it affords her some time to spend with Dick, and – okay, maybe they get distracted from the search here and there. She firmly places the blame of that on Dick. He's the one that's always invading her personal space, or doing other non-appropriate things in public. (Zatanna had been right about the PDA.) They're dressed in civilian clothes: her, in dark slacks with a white halter-top and a brown leather jacket; him, in tight dark jeans and a tight t-shirt and – did she mention the _tightness _of his clothes? Because it's probably worth mentioning two or three times more. Possibly exclusively.

They finally find Selina in Old Town. "Well, well, well," comes the predictable greeting, when she spots them. "Look what the cat's dragged in."

* * *

"Repeat that one more time," Selina says, incredulous. "I'm still waiting for the punch line."

Nightwing sighs. "It isn't a joke. We're serious about this plan. We'll train you. We know two people that learned the skills, and they'll teach it to you."

Selina looks dubious and amused, but mostly annoyed. "You know people that can fly a Reach mothership?"

"It's a long story," Nightwing says. "And we need females without meta-genes to help us execute our plan."

"Why?"

Barbara takes this question. "Because in order to get up on the Motherships, we need to be _taken_. The Reach are always looking for new subjects for their experiments. Right now, we have intel they're looking for females to experiment on."

Selina gets a distasteful look on her face. "Females without the meta-gene?"

Barbara nods. "Two teams of six, and we need a female without a meta-gene on each team. We get up there, we take over the ship or we set explosives. Either way, we take down those six motherships in the sky, and we change the face of this invasion."

"That's… patently _ludicrous,_" Selina says. "You're talking about a suicide mission. Two people infiltrating an entire mothership? Look, I'm a thief. I know how to break in and I know how to break out. I also know how to break people's faces. But what you're talking about is—"

"We have no other choice," Dick says.

"Where's Bruce?" Selina demands. "The last time you didn't say, but now I want answers. Where is he? No way he came up with this plan without a severe case of head concussions as an excuse."

"He's… indisposed," Dick says delicately. Selina's face grows cold and she turns on her heels, walking away with quick strides until Dick calls out, frustrated, "All right, all right! He's in space."

She stops, turns, and stares. "Come again, Boy Wonder?"

"Not Boy Wonder anymore," both Dick and Barbara say at the same time, annoyed. (Barbara is the only one that can call him that.) "He's in space," Dick clarifies, "with five other leaguers. They're… making amends. Consider it a diplomatic mission."

Selina huffs out a breath. "Figures. We get invaded by aliens, and Mr. Tall, Dark and Broody is out across the galaxy. He better have a damn good reason."

"He does, but that's beside the point. Will you help us?"

Selina pauses, wavering. "Twenty grand."

_"What?"_

"I'll help for twenty thousand dollars. Steal of a price, if you ask me, seeing as I'm going on a suicide mission."

"You're _extorting _us for trying to save the planet?" Barbara practically growls. "I thought you and Bruce had some type of understanding. You'd help him and—"

Selina shrugs. "Bruce and I have a complicated relationship that borders on schizophrenia, but we do have an understanding. From time to time, that includes exchanging services for money. And before your mind leaps into the gutter, it's all legit. Alfred has my account information. You want me to help? Transfer the funds by the end of the day."

Selina starts to walk away, but Dick calls out with a bark, "Fine! We have a deal."

Selina pivots, and then rolls her eyes. "_Sucker._ Bruce would have negotiated down to ten."

* * *

"Whoa," Stephanie says, staring at Artemis with wide eyes. "You're the chick that _died._"

"Uh," Artemis goes, awkwardly. "Yeah."

Stephanie swivels to Aqualad. "And you're the evil dude."

Barbara steps in before Aqualad is forced to acknowledge that. "He's not evil, and she's not dead. They've been undercover this entire time."

"So _that's _the big secret you all have been carrying?" Stephanie says, whistling. "Wow, people going to shit bricks when they find out the truth."

That… is a fairly accurate description of what's likely to happen, actually.

* * *

The second step of the plan requires training, but it's like trying to corral a herd of cats.

"We've modified the bioship to replicate the Reach command deck," Artemis says, as she begins instructions. "We have two weeks to get this right. In that time, you all will learn this system backwards and forwards. We can't afford for anything to go wrong, so there is no room for pilot error."

"The teams are as follows," Dick declares. "M'gann and Connor are the first team. She'll alter her DNA to fool the Reach into thinking her meta-gene isn't activated. She'll get roped up with Connor, and they'll take down the mothership hovering over New York. Cheshire and Paula will take the Tokyo mothership. Wally and Artemis will take the Russian one. Aqualad and Selina will infiltrate the one hovering over India. That leaves Tim and Stephanie for Australia, and Babs and I will take on the last mothership in Egypt. Understood?"

Selina raises a hand. "One quick question. Whose brilliant plan was this?"

Aqualad steps forward. "Mine."

"Oh," Selina goes, staring at him with an uplifted eyebrow. "So my partner's the genius behind this? Fantastic. I'm suddenly rethinking my asking price. I should have gone for twenty-five thousand."

"C'mon, Selina," Barbara says, tightly, "Stop suffering from your inflated ego and just—"

"I don't suffer from it," she cuts in, smugly. "I happen to enjoy every second."

"If we can focus," Artemis says.

But Cheshire joins in, trading a look with Selina. "Oh, c'mon, let us poke a little fun. Neither of us are the heroic type, so it's probably a good idea you get used to certain amount of commentary from the peanut gallery."

"Jade," Paula Nguyen-Crock cuts in, severely. "This isn't a joking matter."

"But it's still a _joke,_" Cheshire says, snidely. "Two weeks to learn how to expertly navigate an alien spacecraft? Not to mention, _hello_, we still haven't figured out how we're going to take over the mothership when we get up there. This is the plan that the crack-team that used to foil the Light's every strategy came up with? As a former employee with loosely-affiliated associations, I'm almost embarrassed."

M'gann releases a small sigh and declares, "This is a mistake."

Artemis rolls her eyes. "Yeah, but you're not the one that's going to end up with permanent babysitting duties if this entire thing goes wrong."

"I would have made you official Godmother already," Cheshire supplies, sweetly, "But you were already, y'know - _dead._" Speak of the devil, Lian starts fussing in her baby carriage, and Cheshire rises. "Wait, break time. I gotta go feed the kid. Be back in an hour."

"An _hour_?" Artemis repeats, incredulous. "We need to buckle down and focus."

"Tell that to your niece. She's a finicky eater."

Artemis makes some sort of choked, strangled sound in the back of her throat while her sister exits through the door.

Selina rises a moment later, and Barbara turns to face her. "Where are you going?"

"You heard the lady," Selina offers. "One hour break."

"But we only just started!" Barbara protests.

"Actually, I wouldn't mind a short break," Stephanie cuts in. "I just had a 32 oz bottle of soda, and the sugar is hitting my system and I gotta pee something _bad._"

"Seconded," Tim says.

(It goes on like that for a while.)

* * *

It's a Friday night when Barbara is parked in front of her computer screens, mug in hand and a frown-line between eyebrows. She's got different windows open for different angles and is playing them all at once; the Reach motherships are moving locations. She doesn't know why, but it can't be good.

"Babs," Tim says, timidly. "Maybe you should take a break or something. You've been watching their movements now for nearly twenty-four hours."

"Yes," Barbara replies, in the voice that says _not now, Tim. _She selects specific areas of each window, zooming in on the motherships. Some of the pictures pixelate, some don't, depending on the quality of the footage; she closes five of the six windows and then pulls up the remaining one into the center.

"Where's Dick?" she asks. "I want to show him something."

"Uh, I think he was in the mess hall with Bart and Wally."

She leaves the room without giving a response. The cafeteria is actually a pretty sizeable room, with large clear glass walls on two sides, and so when she's coming down the corridor she can spot the boys from a distance. She's so preoccupied with her findings about the motherships that at first she misses what's right in front of her; then she stops short. Dick and Wally seem crowded around Bart, engaged in an intense sort of conversation. They almost seem to be intimidating the younger guy, and the sight is so out-of-the-blue that Barbara doesn't know what to make of it.

She creeps around the corner, and stops at the doorway. "I don't know," Bart is saying, and Impulse is usually talking a mile a minute, speeding his way through every sentence like he's setting a record; this time his voice so slow and measured. "Look, you were never supposed to find out about that. I slipped up. _Spoilers. _I know I say a lot of things, but some things about the future you're better off not knowing. Besides, the future isn't set in stone. It all can change."

"How does it happen?" Dick demands. "You've got answers, then you have to—"

"I don't really know, man," Bart insists.

"That's not good enough," Wally says. "You can save her from going through that. Tell us what you _do _know."

"I know this," Bart says, firmly, standing up to both guys. "Oracle is a _legend_. One of the most important parts of the Justice League. I'm talking about the central nerve of the place. Using technology and computers to help other super-heroes? It changes the way this place operates. Up-to-the-minute espionage and intel. Coordination. Organization. Oracle is totally _crash_."

"I don't care," Dick grits out. "Tell me how it cripples—"

Bart holds up a hand, stopping Dick short because he's spotted Barbara at the doorway.

The guys all whirl around simultaneously, and Barbara looks on. "What's the Oracle?" she asks curiously.

* * *

TBC...


	4. Chapter 4

Her simple question is met with a dead hush.

Finally, Barbara breaks the silence. "An explanation," she suggests, wryly, "would really help right now."

Instead, the facility alarms go off. The red strobe lights flash throughout the interior of the cafeteria, catching all four of them off-guard. Dick is the quickest to react, though she wonders if it's only because it offers a neat little distraction. He strides for the command room and Barbara is only a step behind him. Both Wally and Bart are curiously sheepish as they follow her, but then the emergency of the hour quickly takes priority.

The next three hours are spent dealing with aerial assaults on League strongholds. Dick dispatches three teams, and Barbara leads Team Beta through the Zeta-tubes to a port off San Francisco where the rest of the night is spent fighting Reach. It's becoming second-nature to them, to halt everything at the drop of a hat to deal with daily skirmishes and Reach assaults. It's becoming second nature, but it's still exhausting and more than a little depressing. She comes back to the base tired and sore, and almost forgetful of the topic of Bart's little chat. _Almost._ As her mother always said, an interrupted conversation should never be forgotten.

It's a winding hallway that leads her to Dick's quarters, and she isn't even sure if he's back yet from his own operation on the east coast, but the evidence shows he is. His Nightwing costume is sprawled across the back of a chair, and the sound of a shower is on. Barbara fidgets with the idea of leaving to come back later – or join him, because that's also an appetizing idea – when something curious catches her attention.

There's a fist-sized crater in the far wall.

Barbara walks up to it, running fingers over the cracks. She already knows it's exactly what it looks like. For a long foggy beat, she thinks about what could make Dick so upset.

_"I know this," Bart said. "You should be proud. Oracle is a legend. One of the most important parts of the Justice League. I'm talking about the central nerve of the place. Using technology and computers to help other super-heroes? It changes the way this place operates. Up-to-the-minute espionage and intel. Coordination. Organization. Oracle is totally crash."_

_"I don't care," Dick grit out. "Tell me how it cripples—"_

The discussion was apparently upsetting enough to set Dick on edge, making him take out his aggression on some unsuspecting wall. Even after a few hours of healthy physical release fighting the Reach. She isn't sure what to make of that, but it can't be good.

A second later, the shower turns off. She waits patiently perched against the bureau until he emerges from the bathroom wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist. Barbara wants her eyes to stay trained on his face, intent on betraying nothing, but despite herself her gaze drops for a second to wander downwards. Her thoughts briefly trip after, watching rivulets of water run down the natural hard lines of his chest – before she coarse-corrects and remembers why she's here in the first place. His well-toned chest and broad shoulders aren't going to distract her from a conversation she intends to have.

"So," she says, readying to launch the opening salvo of her interrogation.

Instead, Dick crosses the room in a flash, and the immediate jolt of his hot mouth covering hers has Barbara stumbling back.

It's the _demand_ of the kiss that throws Barbara at first, a strong swift possessive type of kiss that belies intense emotions. Dick pushes her back against the wall, not a sliver of space in between them as her backside hits the hard plaster. He angles his mouth over hers, his very naked body pressed against hers with only a standard military-issue towel covering his modesty. She strains against self-control for a second, but then he threads his damp fingers through her hair and drags out her name between kisses in this little dark whisper, and – _oh._ Barbara suddenly can't remember how to form words, much less the reason she came here in the first place.

Her fingers drift and then catch on his towel, her shirt dampened by the residue of his shower. He presses his advantage by lifting her leg so that she wraps it around his waist, and the towel falls. There's a series–-a _barrage_ of kisses that follow. There's a part of her still trying desperately to engage in rational function, but then he drops his mouth to suck a small bruise at her throat and Barbara stops thinking entirely.

It's a fast and brutal sort of fuck against the wall. He has her Batgirl suit open at the waist without her even registering it; her utility belt comes off, the zipper of her suit undone in one long clean line, and she has to struggle to get the costume down off her upper body while he relentlessly kisses her. Then it's his fingers slipping underneath her underwear, the pads of his thumb and forefinger rubbing against her. Then later it's his mouth. Then, finally, it's _him_, pressing against her and then inside of her, and she's doing nothing but holding on, bracing herself against the wall and catching purchase on the firm muscles of his shoulders.

He hitches her up against the wall as he pounds into her, and she has to bite her lips to keep from screaming because the entire base is full of people with superpowered hearing, but once or twice his name breaks free anyway, slipping past her lips with enough volume that she's fairly sure even the regular humans on base could hear it. That only makes Dick move harder, faster, driving into her with this reckless, desperate sort of force that makes it impossible for her to think straight.

She comes first, but only barely. She feels Dick come inside her, sticky and wet and clinging as it leaks down her thighs, and she's numbly glad that at least she took her birth control this morning. It takes a few seconds for her body to come down, for the tremors to subside. He rests his head in the curve of her neck, breath panting to even out over her shoulder.

"Dick," she breathes, unevenly, "what was that about?"

He stills, a brief nano-second, but she catches it. "Just wanted you," he says in a low whisper.

The declaration might be true enough, but she knows him too well to read between the lines. There's something behind this interlude, a motivation she can't quite guess at. Her mind trips over a few possibilities before settling on the obvious.

"What did Bart tell you?"

He pulls away, and she feels unsteady as she plants her legs on solid ground again. (They're lucky he's in such good shape because otherwise Barbara wrapped around him like that, with little else as support, would have driven a lesser man to his knees.) He picks up his towel, but ever the gentlemen, offers it to her for clean up. She steps lightly over her crumpled batsuit before cleaning herself off in front the long, oblong mirror at the side. In the reflection, she can see Dick try to marshal his words together. She grants him a moment to get his thoughts in order.

"I don't want to lie to you," he says.

She pauses, then turns around. "Then don't."

"But I can't tell you the truth either," he continues, tiredly.

She flinches. "Dick—"

He overrides her, "You once told me you trusted me more than anyone else in the world, even after lying to you for so long. Do you mean that?"

She's getting a really bad feeling about this. "Yeah. I do. I trust you, Dick."

"Then trust me about this," he implores, a little desperately. "I can't tell you what Bart said, but it's not because I want to lie to you. Some things about the future – they shouldn't be known. Besides, I intend to make it so it doesn't matter."

"You're going to change the future now?"

"We do everyday," he offers, and she doesn't know what's motivating him to be so driven, but it can't be good. "Trust me on this, Babs. Don't ask me anything more about it. I don't want to lie to you, but I can't tell you the truth either."

"Can't or won't?"

"Both, in this case."

She presses her lips together in a thin line. She could keep at this, force a confrontation and a fight in the hopes he'd change his mind – but she knows Dick too well. Once he's made up his mind about something, he can be as stubborn as a bull.

Thing is, so can she.

"All right," she relents, "I won't ask you."

* * *

She never said a thing about asking Bart or Wally.

She goes to Bart because Wally has probably already sworn on his friendship with Dick to keep the secret, and she knows better than to test the resolve of Wally's loyalties. Besides, as it turns out, it takes less than ten minutes to break Bart. In his defense, one of the reasons Barbara is such a successful protégé to Batman is her ability to adopt to a single-minded motivation to the detriment of all else. That type of concentration and drive is often intimidating to others, and Bart has guilt written all over him before she even says a word. She gives him credit for holding out even that long.

"Are you sure you want to know?" Bart says, eyes dark, making him look far older than he is. "It's not something you can unlearn."

"Just tell me," she says. "I'm getting the feeling it's something I deserve to know."

His shoulders drop, a reluctant sign of agreement. "I don't know the details. I don't know when or how, or by who or what. I just know the basic fact that it happens."

"The basic fact that _what_ happens?"

He flinches. "That you become Oracle."

* * *

Barbara runs.

She just takes off, after, needing air, needing freedom, needing distance. She isn't sure where she's going, but it's a clear motivation that she just wants to get there, wherever it is, as long as it's far enough away from Bart and Dick and the rest of them – far enough away from the explanation of the Oracle – but the longer she runs, the more the words catch up with her. Bart told her everything he knows, but it's not enough and it just leaves a jagged little crater in its wake, so Barbara just picks a direction at random and climbs up to rooftops, running full-tilt to leap across buildings and skyscrapers. She uses grappling hooks to maneuver from one peak to the next until her mad-dash leads her to almost trip right over a ledge; she comes face-to-face with the vertigo-inducing drop of at least three-hundred feet.

_Is this how I become a cripple?_ a treacherous voice whispers in her head.

A hand jets out of nowhere at the last split-second, grabbing her by the waist, and pulls her back from the ledge. "What the hell are you doing?" Dick's face appears to her, ashen and panicked.

She shoves him away.

Adrenaline has always been a familiar ally to her, but right now it feels like an unwelcomed intruder in her body. One she can't control because she's shaking, and she _never_ shakes. She pivots and sprints away from Dick, but he just dives right after her and she hates him for that. For everything. For knowing what Bart said and deciding to keep that from her. The bastard. He didn't have the right. She deserved to know. She moves across buildings like something abhorrent is right at her heels. He keeps up. She doesn't know how long it goes on like that, but when she finally lands, breathless and muscles exerted into exhaustion, Dick lands right behind her.

He's clearly winded, but he still tries to reach out for her. "Babs—"

She slams him into a wall. "Don't," she threatens in a low voice. "Don't touch me."

She pins him with an arm braced against his throat, and she does it with enough force to make him grunt. It isn't enough to cut off oxygen supply, though. He leans up against her arm, but he doesn't try to break her hold. Their breathing doubles in disjointed short pants, and she realizes her vision is blurry.

_The life I thought I was going to live?_ she wants to cry, _It's already over. _

"Babs," he breathes out, sounding almost as broken as she feels. "I'm sorry. God, I'm _so sorry_, but it's not going to happen. We'll make sure it doesn't happen."

"How?" she demands, with a choked breath. "We don't even know how it goes down. All Bart knows is that I end up in a wheelchair playing the supercomputer to superheroes."

"You're more important than that—"

"I heard Bart's spiel," Barbara cuts in. "Save me the diatribe about how I turn out to be one of the most important parts of the league."

"That isn't what I'm talking about," Dick says, and his pupils are blown, fully dilated so that the color of his irises is just a thin blue membrane. "You're too important to people. To _me_."

Barbara shivers, feeling her mouth start to twist, but then she just pulls her arm away and steps back. "Go away, Dick. I want to be alone right now."

"I'm not going anywhere."

She closes her eyes, turning away, resentful of the tears slipping down her face. Beyond them, there's a platform that leads to a dead-drop at least sixteen stories high. The wind beats around them, fluttering her cape and howling in the pre-dawn air. She normally loves places like this, so high up and isolated that it feels like she's one of the only people in the entire world capable of staring such a risk down. Now, it's tainted. She can't help but wonder how she's going to become paralyzed from the waist down. A fall? An injury sustained in battle? Knife-wound, gunshot? Who would do it? Who would be responsible? Or would it be her own doing? A mistake.

She closes her eyes and feels nausea work up her throat. She turns back to Dick with a warning, "If you think this changes anything, think again. I'm still Batgirl. I still go on missions. I swear you do one thing – just _one_ thing – because you think I can't handle it, because you're trying to protect me or something, we're _done._We're through. I won't have you questioning my abilities or—"

"Babs," he cuts in, gravely. "You're one of the most capable people I know. I'd never question that."

"I'm serious, Dick. Promise me. Not one thing or—"

He cuts her off this time with a kiss, the same sort of desperation he'd shown earlier in the night, and she thinks, numbly, _oh. So this was why._ She clings to him a little, wrapping fingers around the nape of his neck, digits brushing the hair that's grown just a little too long these last few weeks because he's had more important things to do than keep up with his girly, high-maintenance grooming regime that she always teases him about. His mouth is pliant and comforting under hers, and by the time they've pulled back, she feels a little less crazed. Her breathing has slowed.

"I'm scared," she tells him, in a small voice she wouldn't use with anyone else.

"Me, too," he confides, just as softly. "But we'll handle this the same way we handle everything else thrown our way. Together, Babs."

She wants to believe him so, so badly.

* * *

The next morning she feels hung-over without the benefit of a fun night preceding it, but life marches on. More importantly, so does training. Artemis leads the test piloting exercise, but it's obvious that Wally let Bart's little revelation slip because Artemis keeps sliding sideway glances at Barbara throughout the lesson.

"I'm fine," Barbara tells her, when they have a moment alone. "I know Wally told you, and I'm fine."

Artemis flinches, but has the grace to forgo any denials. "If you need to talk about it, I'm here."

She doesn't want to talk about it. She doesn't even want to _think_ about it. Both Dick and Bart had been right, in a way. Her knowing about this is almost more problematic than it's worth, because the knowledge doesn't afford her the likelihood of changing her future. She doesn't know enough details, so it all it does – all it can do – is make her obsessive with scenarios of _what if_. She doesn't need that type of distraction right now. Not with the fate of the world resting at stake.

So, she's determined to go about regular business. Red Arrow joins the crew, adding tension or deflecting it; Barbara can't tell which. He'd been sent out on official League business for the last few days, and the delayed reunion with Aqualad – she'd heard through the grapevine – had been rather unpleasant. What's worse, now that he's here, Artemis' mother has decided to step down from her allotted role in the mission and Roy takes her place. And that's like a slap across Barbara's face because it's like admitting inferiority because of her handicap. She gets it, objectively. Who wouldn't choose a strong and able-bodied superhero like Roy to be Cheshire's partner, over an aging ex-con in a wheelchair?

_A wheelchair._

It stings.

But Barbara grits her teeth, and pretends more for herself than for the sake of others that today is just a normal day. Aside from Wally and Artemis tiptoeing around her, and Dick's sullen behavior, no one else acts as if they can pick up on the weird anxiety. Or maybe they blame that on the tension of Aqualad and Roy's jilted bromance. Either way, the bioship-turned-training-pad is ripe with anxiety the entire day.

When they finally make it back to the base, Barbara flies off for some much-needed alone time. Her instincts call to return to her hub of computers, but as soon as she arrives, she stops short at the threshold and stares at the console with malice in her eyes. She imagines spending years in front of it, bound by a wheelchair. She imagines her life wasting away watching other superheroes live out their lives.

The thing is, Barbara has always been graceful. She can't imagine a life without use of her legs. She's been a gymnast since the age of seven, good enough for the Olympic try-outs before the idea of being Batgirl had derailed that dream. She excels at hand-to-hand combat because she's trained her body every day of her life since she was a kid. That type of commitment and endurance requires more than just dedication; it's her _life_. Without her legs, without her ability to walk or run or_fight_, who can she become?

_Oracle_.

Barbara already sorta hates the name.

"I'm sorry," someone says, startling her.

She turns to find Bart standing behind her, with a sheepish stance and his hands shoved into jeans and eyes downcast. "Bart," she says, stupidly, like she's surprised he even exists.

"I owe you an apology."

"You don't—"

"Yeah, I do. I let my mouth get away from me, and—" he cringes. "I totally crashed the mode. I know better than that. It was a stupid mistake, and it's gotta be tearing you apart now."

She can't deny it, but she shakes her head anyway. "Not your fault, Bart. I know the how this game is played. You were doing what you thought was best."

"You can still change it, y'know? Your future? Nothing is set in stone."

She smiles, a bit sadly. He's given up his study of the floor and has progressed to intense consideration of the walls. She doesn't quote the famous line that's been rattling around in her head lately: _our destiny is frequently met in the very paths we take to avoid it._ Because that would be too prosaic, too predictable, not to mention unnecessarily cruel to a guy who's already beating himself up.

Besides, she's never really been the type to believe in fate before, and she doesn't want to start now.

* * *

"There's no touching the Reach," one of Kaldur's informants says, an alien that he managed to befriend and turn against his former allegiances. "If ever there was a race you didn't want as your enemy, they would be it. Just ask the last planet they tried to invade."

"The last planet?"

"A planet called Rimbor."

Dick looks up in recognition. "That's the planet that Vandal Savage had the six Justice League members attack."

"What?" the informant asks, confused.

Dick waves off the question, because everyone who needs to know the story already knew it. While the Light had Batman and five other leaguers under mind-control, they'd traveled across the universe and went on a rampage for an entire 16 hours, declaring to all in several different alien languages that they were the Justice League and that the rest of the galaxy should beware. Their actions caused the six superheroes to be considered wanted criminals, and by extension, every member of the League was unwelcome in the entire sector.

"The Reach lost the last war," the informant continues, "but just barely. It's a wonder an all out galaxy war hasn't been declared since then. But the Reach have been biding their time, for the sake of keeping entire world armies off their backs."

"They were trying to cut off Earth's potential allies," Kaldur determines. "That's why the Light sent those six superheroes to attack."

Barbara comes forward, "Do you think Batman and the others can convince the Rimbor to come and help us now?"

Dick shakes his head. "We can't rely on that. We have to assume we're on our own, and proceed forward."

"Good luck," the informant says, grimacing. "The Reach lost the war, but Rimbor was never the same again. It descended into anarchy. Let us hope the same does not happen to Earth. Or something even far, far worse."

* * *

"Are you all right?" someone asks.

Barbara turns to find Paula beside her.

"Artemis told me that you might need someone to talk to," she continues, rather curiously. "She seemed to think for some reason that I might be able to help."

"She did?" Barbara says, stiffening. "What did she tell you?"

Paula shrugs, a little clueless. "Only that you needed to talk. I think my daughter just naturally assumes that as a mother, I'm better at listening than most on base. She might be right, though. Forgive me, Batgirl, but it looks as if something _is_troubling you."

For a beat, she wants nothing more than to fling out the standard denial. But Barbara stares at Paula in her wheelchair, mind fixated on the detail, and what comes out instead is a rather callous and unthinking, "How did you break your back?" A second later, she flinches as the words catch up with her brain, and shame washes over Barbara. She may be going through a hard time, but that's no reason to be offensive. "Sorry," she backtracks, tiredly and a bit mortified, "that's none of my business."

Paula's face is a bit strained, but mostly she shakes her head in understanding. "No need to apologize. It's a natural curiosity, I suppose. The truth is I broke my back running a heist on a bank. Shot, while I was running."

"The cops did that to you?" Barbara asks, horrified, especially when she thinks about how Artemis' family is from Gotham City, too; her father's men could've done that.

But Paula shakes her head. "No, not the cops. A guy on my crew. You see, you can't really trust bad people, even if they're your own. I learned that lesson the hard way."

"You sound so calm about it."

"I am, now," Paula answers. "Wasn't, always."

Barbara thinks about the emotions already churning inside of her. "I'd be angry," she remarks, rigidly, mostly to herself. "I don't think I'd ever get over that."

Paula tips an eyebrow up, then nods once. "I was angry for a long, long time, but I'll tell you the truth. I was angry mostly at myself. Losing the ability to use my legs was a wake-up call, though. It made me become… the mother Artemis needed. A better woman. I got clean. Life has a weird way of working out like that."

Barbara stays silent for a long beat. She doesn't risk saying anything else for fear of offending, but the truth is she has trouble buying that. Bart had even tried to tell her something similar – that after becoming wheelchair bound, Barbara will go on to do some of her most important work ever for the League.

It's a detail that's all cold-comfort.

"Why are you so curious?"

Barbara bites her lips. "No reason," she manages. "I just… I just wonder about these things."

* * *

Here's something she never would have guessed about Dick: the guy _snores_.

It's past midnight, and Barbara is a little disconcerted that she's managed to endure an epic avalanche of stress and upheaval the last few days, but Richard Grayson's snoring might be the one thing to tip her right over the edge into cold-blooded murder. Or justifiable homicide. Her father's the commissioner, after all, and she's reasonably certain she could get a jury to acquit her if she just made a recording of the noises this man makes in his sleep. It's like a chainsaw in the middle of a hacking cold. What on Earth does he have up his nose?

She wants to thrash her pillow into submission to keep from waking up Dick, because he _does_ deserve some rest, even if it comes at the expense of her own, but here's the other thing she wouldn't have guessed about Dick: he's a cuddler. No, cuddling is the wrong term. He has a _vice-like_ grip on her, and it's a little overpowering to say the least. It's obviously unconscious, because the guy only gets this way when he's completely knocked-out, but she has to wonder about how a man with so many walls up during the day can be so utterly _needy_ in his sleep.

Needy, and loud.

Finally, after suffering in silence for a good long hour (figuratively speaking, of course, given silence isn't an option), her everlasting patience has found its match and she gives up on the idea of sleeping in his bed for the night. She tries to wiggle out of his hold without actually waking him up, but his face is buried in her hair and she can tell from his warm breath on her neck and ear that he might be dead to the world right now, but it won't take much to alert him to movement. She releases a forceful breath, and then applies gentle pressure against his ribs with her elbow. His arm tightens and his hand lands against her chest, the curve of his palm settling over the swell of one of her breasts, and all she can think is, _of course_, Dick Grayson is copping a feel even while he sleeps.

"Dick, wake up," she sighs, tiredly. "Dick, c'mon. Wake up."

After a moment, he makes a noise deep in his throat that's suspiciously like a moan, and pulls her more firmly against him. His two-day-old beard stubble tickles her where it grazes against her skin.

All right, that's it.

"Maneuver Fourteen!" she shouts, ordering.

Dick's eyes snap open, jerking back in shock. She uses the second to slide free with all the grace afforded to anyone in the batfamily, and is already reaching for Dick's _Gotham Rogues_ football jersey to cover herself.

"Maneuver Fourteen?" he questions, roughly, blinking up at her. "What the hell, Barbara?"

She shrugs. "You weren't reacting to a whisper, so I gave a command."

He makes a face. "That's the command we give when we need help trying to throw a large assailant off our backs."

She maintains a look of pure innocence while gathering up her things. "Oh, is it?"

"Where are you going?" He sounds a little distressed now, even _pouty_. "Babs, it's the middle of the night."

"I realize that, Boy Genius. I need sleep, and I don't think I'll get it here."

He pauses. "Was it my snoring?" Off her pointed eyebrow, he sighs and flops back onto his mattress, sprawled out like a jelly-fish, thick hair tousled, bonelessly relaxed. The sight is actually tempting enough to make Barbara reconsider leaving his bed, before he mumbles to himself, groggily, "Zatanna and Rocket always had a problem with that, too."

And that's her cue to leave.

"Wait! Sorry!" he says quickly, lightning fast to grab at her before she can jet out the door. "My brain isn't fully functioning right now. Forget I said that bit?"

"What bit?" she offers, in a dry voice. "The part where you've slept with half my best friends?"

"Hey! I think that's an unfair assessment."

"Statistically speaking, it's accurate."

She sorta hates that there's this little green monster inside of her now, because she's never been the jealous type before, not with her previous boyfriends, not even with Dick when he'd dated a slew of other girls including her closest friends. She's always found his relationships amusing, in a train wreck sort of way, even while she'd been harboring a secret crush on him for years.

Now, it's different. She doesn't like picturing Dick with anyone else, especially in bed.

"Look," she says, sighing, pinching the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. He throws his legs over the side of the bed, planting bare feet on the cold floor, and she allows him to pull her into the space between his knees, but not back into bed. "I'm tired. I'm cranky. I just need a few hours to myself for sleep. I'll be fine in the morning."

He looks worried. "Babs, you don't have to handle everything on your own."

She shakes her head. "I'm not. It's not like that. I just… I just need some sleep, Dick. Honestly, no hidden agendas."

After a beat, he sighs. "All right."

She drops a kiss to his lips, very chaste. "I'll see you in the morning."

She doesn't hear his response, but she doesn't really _wait_ to hear it either.

* * *

Over the final week, she decides instead of wrestling with her demons, the only sane way of handling this is to focus on training. Long after the others have left for the night, turned in or tuckered out, Barbara can always be found in the recesses of the bioship, learning and relearning different commands and maneuvers. The Batfamily aren't just known to loom around on rooftops; they fight criminals with both their hands and their minds, and the criminals fear those skills. So Barbara knows she's got a lot to learn if she has to keep up with the others. (She'll have to be _better_, in fact, just to allot for the day she might be seen as inferior because of physical handicaps.)

She's always been a quick study, but that won't measure up anymore.

It's hard trying to handle a spacecraft meant to emulate a mothership the size of New York. That, and her responsibilities at the new HQ monitoring traffic and intel, keep her busy. Though, sometimes she finds herself drifting into dangerous territory, thinking about how she might be able to alter her future – change of venue, of vocation, better suits, smaller risks – but there's not really any way to know if any of it would make a difference. Given that she's made Dick swear on their friendship that he won't ever act different around her because of Bart's revelation, she can't in good grace allow herself to fall into the same trap.

Someone enters in from behind, and Barbara sighs. "I'm almost done. Don't worry about me sleeping, I'll—"

"Babs," Dick says quickly, "It's your father. He's woken up."

* * *

Barbara hasn't been back to visit her comatose father in nearly a week, and things feel chilly when she enters the high school facility. The response site is already low on supplies, she can tell. There's three times the number of refugees there than was present a few days ago, and there's more fear too. She can see it in the starkness of people's eyes. Barbara is in her civilian clothes, but Dick has changed into his alter-ego uniform and people hug the walls to make a hole for him as they walk passed. They stare at Nightwing with a desperate sort of hope that leaves _her_feeling claustrophobic, and she's thankful when they finally arrive at her father's bedside.

"Dad!" she cries out, in joy.

What transpires is a predictable bout of crying and hugs, and her father looks pale and sickly skinned, but he's in better shape than she'd been expecting considering she was led to believe the coma might result in long-term brain damage. The doctors quickly inform her that it isn't the case here, that he's beaten all the odds – to which Barbara just slides a sideway glance at him, thinking, _That's my dad._

Dick leaves them alone the entire time. Barbara knows she can't spend the entire day there, but seeing her father lifts this invisible block of ice off her chest and she loathes thinking about leaving. She spoon-feeds him a lukewarm cup of soup and wastes the entire afternoon away.

"Stop fussing over me," he chides, in good nature.

"You woke up from a coma," Barbara throws back. "Prepare for a lot of fussing. Bucketloads, even."

"I'm sorry I put you through that, Barbara."

She stops, staring at him for a long beat, before she drops her voice into a whisper, "Do you ever think about stopping? You get hurt, and you might lose everything one day. All this, for justice. Do you ever think about stopping, Dad?"

"Where's this coming from, Barbara? You know I'm fine. The doctors said I'll be moving about in no time."

"What if you couldn't, though? I just—" she flounders, "I just hate seeing you get hurt, is all."

It's only a portion of the truth, but it's still the truth.

He regards her with this solemn sort of look – deep, understanding, almost piercing. It reminds her of the fact that this man is the best detective on the force and can often see through people's lies and deceits like they're made of tissue-thin paper. He's an old man to begin with, but when he looks at her like that, he looks like an old _soul._

"Do I ever think about stopping?" he repeats, solemnly. "Never, and yet all the time. But what type of man would I be if I turned and walked away when things got tough? What sort of lesson would I be teaching _you_ if I did that? There's only two types of people in the world, Barbara. People who walk away when things get too hard, and people who don't. Me and you, kid? We're a stubborn breed. We've always been the latter."

"Yeah," Barbara says, quietly, drawing strength from the words. "We've always been the latter."

* * *

The group is seated in a tight cluster around the long oblong table, but it's a quiet dinner before the rambunctious noise of the last person arriving breaks it. "Hey guys," Wally announces, loudly, grabbing a plate off the table, "nice to see everyone gathered around, though 'the last supper' feeling is a bit morbid for my taste, but man, I'm starving. Thanks for picking up extra dessert, babe. You've got bedhead again, Nightwing, is that soda, _mine._"

Selina, Cheshire, Aqualad and Roy all raise eyebrows, staring at him in bemusement. Tim just snickers, while Steph seems to nod her agreement towards Dick's hair and then glance suspiciously toward Barbara. Artemis, with a small, fond smile, lets Wally drop into the chair beside her. Connor obliges by passing him the pitcher of soda, and M'gann even pushes forward her baked casserole pointedly for Wally to try. He grins, and digs in with his usual enthusiasm.

"Okay, then," Dick declares, shaking his head. "Now that we're all here, let's start. As of 0800 tomorrow morning, we go dark. No radio communication between teams. You have your partner's back, and that's it. By sundown, you should be "abducted" by Reach's scouts."

"Again," Steph mutters under her breath, dryly. "Yay."

"We all know the plan," Dick continues, "but if there's any last minute questions, now's the time."

A hand waves daintily in the air, demanding attention. "I got one," Selina offers, in that _tone_ of hers. "Who assigned the teams? Because I'm looking at it, and it's quite obviously skewed in one perspective. Barbara and Dick, Wally and Artemis, Jade and Roy, M'gann and Connor – even Steph and Tim. Was it by _couples_ on purpose?"

"Ugh," Stephanie cuts in, sounding grossed out. "I am not with Tim! Why do people keep saying that?"

"Yeah," Tim protests, _far_ less vehemently.

Selina rolls her eyes. "Forgive me. Those of consenting age, then."

"Feeling left out, Selina?" Cheshire says with a laugh.

"Your guy at least showed up," Selina answers, glancing at Red Arrow. "Meanwhile, my guy is still probably orbiting somewhere around Mars."

"Batman is _not_ visiting Mars," M'gann informs through gritted teeth. "Rimbor is a planet sixteen million light-years away, and represents one of the most notorious sectors of the known universe. It's inhabited by criminals and smugglers, and has one of the most corrupt governments in place. It is _nothing_ like Mars."

"_Right,_" Selina says, voice dry. "Still, Aqualad and I are wondering if we should be feeling insulted somehow that we're left out of the pattern."

"At no point did I voice any such objections," Aqualad says.

"Anyway," Dick redirects quickly, getting back to business. "Since there's no _real_questions, I'd like to take this moment to say a few words."

"Oh, goody," Cheshire says, like the idea of listening to that is tantamount to torture. She turns toward Selina. "You want to celebrate the last night we're all probably gonna be alive by eating dinner with kids barely out of puberty? Or do you wanna go out on the town, get offered free drinks by stupidly handsome men, and possibly start up a bar fight? My mom's already covering babysitting duty for Lian."

"Sounds like a plan," Selina replies.

The two women rise and exit while chatting animatedly, and Artemis offers in their wake, "They're serious about that bar fight."

"I know," Roy says, resigned. "I better go keep an eye on them."

When he leaves, the moment of frivolity seems to pass with him, and everyone grows somber. Barbara looks around the table and the truth is this last year has changed them all. For the most part, they're all still the same kids that first joined up in a team where superheroes overshadowed them; they were just the sidekicks, kids with acne and homework who were trying desperately to keep up in a dangerous world. It all stopped being kids-play real quick. They're all sharper now, too, trimmed down and more certain in their movements. There's sketches of wisdom in youthful eyes and faint indentations of responsibility settled heavily on slim shoulders. They've all been through so much.

"I just wanted to say," Dick offers, "I know we've had some rough times in the past, but it hasn't always been a disaster. There's been some aster, too. Just know there's no one more than you guys that I'd want fighting beside me. Not Superman, or Green Arrow or The Flash or Martian Man or any one of the other Justice League bigwigs."

"Not even Batman?" Wally tosses in, grinning.

Dick shakes his head, smiling. "It's you guys. You're my team."

* * *

Barbara Gordon does not believe in luck. She never has. As a believer in both personal responsibility and a reasonably orderly universe, she doesn't approve of the idea that random chance holds much sway over anything important. They've planned this, and it _has_ to go according to the designs.

And at first, it does.

Both Dick and Barbara make it inside the city limits with no problems, triggering the Reach's security checkpoints with suspect IDs. She is Lucy Lynch, age 23, and he is Nicholas Lynch, age 25, a married couple from New York, and Dick's formally flawless forgeries have been altered to trigger alarms. It's almost insulting how bad the IDs are, now, and Barbara would've felt personally affronted by carrying them if getting caught hadn't been the sole purpose. The others on the team are carrying similar counterfeit IDs all across the globe, and even if they don't have radio contact with anyone else, she knows the first step in the plan is one that won't trip anyone up. _Get caught and get taken aboard._ It isn't, by any stretch of the imagination, the hardest part of the mission.

"A female," one of the Reach scouts notes, squinting at Barbara. "Her meta-gene is inactive. Take her and her male companion to the holding cells for transfer."

It's almost too easy.

Dick sticks close to her as they're escorted through the streets of Gotham like criminals in a long conga line, and it's towards a familiar sight: the Gotham Police Station. It feels strange for Barbara to return to the recently refurbished building, one that no longer holds a placard with her father's printed name in the corner office. Instead, the Reach are using it as a detention facility for citizens who might prove useful in their experiments. It's perfectly obvious that the horrific sight of citizens being plucked from the streets is a common spectacle for the people living in the area, because no one peeks out behind their curtained windows to gawk at them.

The symbolism doesn't escape her notice. Once upon a time, her invitation into the police headquarters had been implicit and unwavering, but now Barbara feels like a common criminal approaching it. The place has been redecorated and taken over, but it still has the same roots. It's still a solid edifice of stone, brick and marble, and she's here for the same reason as always. Because the love she bears for this city — her father's city — will not be kowtowed by a bunch of alien invaders.

The difficult part is the waiting, because they have to sit huddled all night long in a small jail cell with a dozen innocent and scared civilians. Alien bureaucracy, it seems, is just as annoying as human bureaucracy, because it takes a while before the Reach scouts can sort out the orders for their transfer to a mothership.

In the corner of the cell, along the brick wall, there is a young woman and her hearing-impaired five-year-old boy. Barbara ends up watching them for a long time, even when Dick insists that they should rest while they can. But she can't sleep. So she watches them. She's always had a gift for languages, and knows the basics of almost six different ones, including sign language. It's not enough to comprehend everything perfectly, but Barbara still follows enough. Dick keeps his shades on all through the night, so she can't tell what keeps him preoccupied, but she gets the feeling she might be the main focus of his scrutiny. Barbara, on the other hand, can't take her eyes off the five-year-old. The mother tries to comfort him with little things, retelling _Princess and the Pea_ and _Goldilocks and the Three Bears_ with her hands and animated facial expressions a dozen times over; Barbara just watches, fascinated, picking up a few new phrases here and there.

"Babs," Dick whispers, nudging her so that she notices the guards approaching the cell door. "I think it's time to move."

* * *

The shuttle shudders violently as it drops out of hyperspace. In the distance, the hulking mothership made of sleek sheet metal and reflective glass looms over the Atlantic Ocean like a majestic mirage. Despite herself, Barbara has to admit the larger ship is a masterpiece by any standards. Venerated as a fully-equipped battle cruiser, it carries all the latest alien technology for shields and weapons, and is almost flawlessly designed against outside attacks. Their shuttle slips into one of the alcoves, and soon the detainees, wedged shackled in pairs, walk down a remote transport line like they're following a yellow-brick-road. The callous Reach crew continue unabated in their daily work like the shipment of new people isn't even worthy of noting.

The schematics Aqualad provided turn out to be perfect. Barbara studies her surroundings, noting the auxiliary hallways that lead to the command deck, the engine room, the armory – it's all familiar to her. The group is led to the central section of the ship, which serves as the cargo hold and a prison camp rolled into one. Barbara, Dick and the others stop and stare in horror at the sight of it, because she knew it'd be a labyrinth of single cells and large bulk containers, but she'd underestimated the sheer breadth and width of it by half. It must hold hundreds, possibly _thousands_, of people. Perfect for transporting hostile living cargo of any species, any size, any amount.

She exchanges a look with Dick, and receives a nod.

Then, it's pure satisfaction – because she jabs a cross at her guard and follows it up with a backstab to the solar plexus. She disarms the other Reach alien, and swivels his weapon to pistol-whip it across his face. She finishes off the two of them simultaneously with a roundhouse kick – perhaps excessive, because it's not like the aliens had offered much of a fight, but when she lands and looks over, Dick is similarly standing over a handful of defeated guards with a satisfied look on his face. Then he frowns.

"I was hoping to call for Maneuver Seventeen," he says.

Barbara blinks at him. "There is no Maneuver Seventeen," she says in bewilderment.

"It's one I'm still working out in my head, but basically it requires us to cause a disruption by making-out."

She stares at him, incredulous. "…making out?"

"And then jumping the guards when they try to separate us." His face is the pure definition of smug. "I think it's one that requires plenty of exercise and a field-test, but I'm optimistic it'll work as an effective distraction tactic."

"You've been watching too many spy movies."

He shrugs. "Blame Wally. He's into a James Bond phase right now."

"Who _are_ you people?" a prisoner in the back breathes, sounding both awed and bewildered.

Dick turns to them. "We're the guys that are going to get you home in no time, but you need to trust us."

People turn out to be very trusting when you rescue them.

They fall into line accordingly, and it feels perfect, all of it going effortlessly as planned. But nothing _ever_ goes that perfectly. Something feels weird around her mid-section, warning those gut-instincts of hers that have very rarely led Barbara wrong, but she quells the feeling and continues on with a single-minded focus. She finally allows herself to remove the alien tech device from her bra and plug it into the nearest computer console. The virus is one procured by Aqualad, effective in overriding Reach's mainframe. It's going to take a while to upload, but they can't wait while it boots up.

"Batgirl," Dick whispers, before they split up, "Just… be careful."

She can tell he's thinking about Bart's revelation, even if he'll never admit to it aloud. Maybe it'll always be there, a silent ticking time bomb between them, on every mission, around every bend of the corner – for the rest of her life until events unfold exactly like how it's preordained. She can't comfort him with meaningless words like, _I'll be all right_ or _don't worry_, because if there was ever a situation that called for concern, it'd be this one. But he looks sorta adorable when he's worried, so Barbara does the only thing she can do.

She pulls him to her, and plants a firm kiss to his lips. "Good luck," she tells him, before speeding off in the other direction.

* * *

_Boom!_

The explosion rocks the entire vessel, and Barbara pitches sideways as she's flung across the hall. A second later, she's already moving swiftly down the corridor in order to meet back up with Dick, but the blaring alarms and the alerted guards are predictably complicating the matter.

The entire ship is bifurcated in six different sections, and the each section is detachable; it's self-powered and self-contained in every sense so that the Reach can jettison the load at any time. Every section of the ship is capable of being a self-sustained vessel, ready-and-able to transform into half a dozen smaller ships rather than a single large one. (Ironically, the intimidating design actually turns out to be a boon for humans today.) But Barbara stifles a frown, thinking of how easily the Reach could imprison their enemies in virtually any section of the ship, and how any internal breach could be solved by just cutting a section of the ship loose. It'd drop the piece out into space, drifting aimlessly – and the main bulkhead with command control and missile capabilities would always remain preserved.

In any case, the plan is on-schedule. A pair of guards attack her, but Barbara takes one down after another as a series of explosions go off across the mothership. She stops at one of the monitors and uses Aqualad's algorithm to check on the virus – it's only 46% complete. That leaves at least another ten to fifteen minutes before she can successfully raid command deck and take control.

There's a full lurching jolt when the prisoner cargo hold dislodges and breaks off, and Barbara breathes a sigh of relief that at least the humans on board are safe. Their section will drift off into space until Justice League members can retrieve it later.

The plan wears on.

One by one, sections of the ship shut down in power. Barbara finally makes it to the end of the ship near command control, and waits in the rafters of the corridor by lodging herself up against support beams while Reach personnel run to-and-fro in frenzied anarchy beneath her.

_Dick is late. He's never late._

Time rushes by, and then she hears it. The alarms over the nearby bulkhead doors go red, signaling standard lockdown mode to preserve the integrity of the main command deck. But it's _too soon_, because Dick still hasn't rendezvoused with her. Barbara's prepared herself for a long, brutal mission, but this is nothing like that. It's moving too fast, too viciously, and she knows there's a strong chance that the reason Dick is late is because he's injured – or _worse._ The idea is panic-inducing.

The main deck doors finally slide shut, locking her in – and Dick _out_. The Reach scientists continue to work in disorderly chaos, but Barbara feels like the air just got knocked out of her lungs; it's all on her now; Dick is no longer part of the equation. She can't pause and think about _why_ or _how_; she has no choice but to proceed with the plan.

She releases pellets of specialized knock-out gas near the door. The Reach start coughing as the smoke spreads through the entire main deck, and one by one the scientists and soldiers start slumping to their knees. Barbara holds her breath, perched in the upper beams while the pellets do their work. Less than a minute later, she drops gracefully from her perch to land among a floor littered with unconscious aliens.

That's when things go totally off-book.

_"Breach Detected. Self-Destruct Activated,"_ an automated voice informs her,_"Vessel will Self-Destruct in T-Minus Fifteen Minutes."_

"What?" she breathes to herself, horrified. "No, no, _no_. The virus was supposed to override that!"

* * *

The virus never finished uploading.

She takes a deep breath, studies the algorithm's progress, and realizes the reason it stalled was because of a new Reach firewall that Aqualad's programming hadn't foreseen. It's a sinking feeling to realize she's trapped in alien spacecraft about to explode. It isn't, exactly, a full loss, because it's always been priority one to take down the mothership anyway possible. Barbara just hadn't planned on being _on_ on the ship when it went down.

_"T-Minus Nine Minutes Before Self-Destruct."_

The Reach all remain blissfully unconscious to the impending demise. In the meantime, she looks for a way out. She steadies herself on the support beams again, then swings once, twice, three times before letting go. She grabs onto the ledge near the ceilings, and tries to break through the airducts. It's no use. They're sealed tight. She drops back to the floor just in time to find Dick rushing to the bulkhead doors. He peers at her through the small oval window with wide eyes and a bloodied lip, and she doesn't even have the chance or possibility to mime teasing him about his tardiness, or lift a questioning eyebrow concerning his injuries, because his attention is fixated on working open the door.

The doors stay stubbornly shut, however.

"Anytime now, Dick," she mutters, well aware he can't hear anything she says. Her impatience must show on her face, because Dick makes this _hold your damn horses_ gesture with his hands, and she glares at him through the window because that's easy for him to say.

_"T-Minus Six Minutes Before Self-Destruct."_

Time starts to feel like it's slowing down as she comes to grip with the obvious.

Slowly, she retreats a few steps. She moves back to the main deck consoles, and almost mechanically, like she's running on autopilot, she uses Artemis' training lessons to pilot the ship to a temporary halt and pull up a screen for the command to jettison another bulkhead section; the one, specifically, with Dick in it. Six minutes is barely enough time for him to get to minimum safe distance. She knows that. They've run the simulations on this a thousand and one times.

Dick pounds on the metal doors, making her stiffen.

Barbara keeps her back to him. She only has to close her eyes and think of all the times she's seen that stubborn look on Dick's face to know what expression he's wearing now. He's never been quite as quick on the uptake as her, or maybe he's too obstinate about being everyone's savior. Barbara's more practical. She's been coming to terms with a cruel fate for the past week now, and it's ironic she'd spent so much of it worried about becoming crippled – and now, look, it doesn't even boil down to that.

There's more banging on the door, and he's clearly figured out what she's doing because it's taken on an urgent fervor.

Dick will never willingly abandon her, even if it means the certainty of his own death. She has to be willing to do whatever it takes to help him, then, and if that means making the sacrificial call, then so be it.

She turns around, and he stops pounding.

_Don't_, he mouths through the window, knowingly. _Don't do it, Babs._

It's a desperate sort of look. She thinks of a thousand and one things she could to say to him at that moment, justifications and reasons and arguments, and yet standing stripped of all of them, there's only one thing that burns her throat.

_Don't,_ he pleas.

She knows half a dozen different languages, or at least parts of them. In Amsterdam, they may say "Ik hou van je." In Paris, they most certainly say "Je t'aime." In Albania, they'll say "Te dua," and in Zulu, "Ngiyakuthanda." But Barbara simply points to herself, makes a gentle fist with her hands, and crosses them over her heart. She points back at Dick, and even though he's never taken a single sign language lesson in his entire life, she knows he gets the message loud and clear.

There's tears gathering in his eyes, and she's only ever seen Dick cry a few times before. It's still one of the most heart-wrenching things she's ever seen.

_I love you, too_, he mouths back.

She hits the command with a single stroke, and watches as Dick's section breaks off and jettisons into the ocean.

_"T-Minus Five Minutes Before Self-Destruct."_

* * *

**AN: **Epilogue forthcoming.


	5. Epilogue

_Dick gets thrown to the ground as the section is jettisoned, and it's a large, cacophonous crash as it hits the water. He's flung like a ragdoll across the room, but any injuries sustained is a distant second to other concerns. He can't focus on anything else except Babs._

_A few seconds later, even when Reach guards come up behind him, it's barely worth a tenth of his concentration to take them down because he's so caught up in going over his options. He can't let Barbara die. He just can't. Bad enough there's some omen out there that she's going to become paralyzed, but Dick would gladly suffer a thousand deaths before he lets her go down in some glorious blaze._

_He uses an interface outlet to hack into the Reach guidance system, but it's all down because the crash into the ocean has temporarily disrupted all systems. He runs through the damage assessment, frustrated and impatient, and checks his watch again for the timed countdown. Four minutes, twelve seconds left before self-destruct. Barely enough to time to strategize anything, and he can't think of anything useful anyway. It's not even long enough to send out an S.0.S._

_Another pair of Reach guards appear behind him, and this time they're following the command of a bigger threat. "Well, well, well," Vandal Savage greets, in surprise. "I should have known it'd be you, boy. You've always been a thorny one, haven't you?"_

_Dick grits his teeth, and turns around. "You've already lost, Savage. The Light and the Reach met their end today. You just haven't realized it yet."_

_"Arrogance is rarely justified in the young," Savage warns, snidely. "You think you can outmaneuver me?"_

_"Well, I did so easily enough when I was only fourteen."_

_Savage flinches, then offers a cold smile. "I've been at this ploy for decades. Longer, even. You take down one mothership, and I've got five more. You take down all the motherships, and you've still got the smaller fleets to deal with. Anyway you cut this, you can't win because you're outgunned and outnumbered. Recognize your inferiority, boy."_

_"The name," he bites out, "is Nightwing."_

_He attacks, diving forward to deliver a somersaulted kick to the face. Dick flips over and slams into both guards, using momentum to tackle them to the ground. Vandal draws out a gun and opens fire. A spattering of bullets bite through the floor and dent the walls. Dick dives, grappling for the gun before Savage slams a boot into his stomach. Dick retreats, feet quick and calculating. The guards end up in the crosshairs of Savage's assaults, and both go down bloody with bullets to the body. Savage doesn't even flinch at mowing down his own men._

_Dick dodges back until Savage runs out of ammo, and that's when Dick goes on offense again. The man reacts with startling swiftness for a 50,000 year-old guy. Dick reaches for his batarang, but Savage knocks it away. It isn't more than another minute of trading hard blows before Dick is reminded of his miscalculation. He's gripped in a headlock when there's a repetitive beep from his Nightwing-insignia wristwatch. He manages to glance down at the timer, and realizes his fatal error._

_There's a blinding halo that scorches the sky when Barbara's mothership explodes in the distance. _

_All fight goes out of him. Dick watches through the exterior windows, eyes-widening in alarm as it registers, the full breadth and significance of the moment. _

_Savage laughs into his ear. "Your girl's dead," he taunts. "And you just let it happen."_

He wakes up in a cold sweat, gasping for air. It's pitch-black in his bedroom, and he swings his legs over the edge of the bed and drops his head into both hands, scrubbing fingers across his scalp. He tells himself that it's just a bad dream, that he won't let nightmares infect him any longer, but it's been this way for every night in the last two weeks. Ever since the final takedown of the motherships.

"Dick?" a voice says groggily, and he turns to find Barbara blinking at him. "Another nightmare?" she questions, softly.

"Sorry, sorry," he breathes, "Go back to sleep. I'm fine."

"What was it about this time?"

_You_, he wants to say. Because it's always about Barbara lately, a different theme to each nightmare. Between the anxiety of almost losing her two weeks ago, and the overhanging threat of her paralysis in the nebulous future, he thinks he might never sleep peacefully again in his entire life.

Barbara seems to read his mind. "It was about me, wasn't it?" she sighs, sitting up slowly. "Dick, I'm fine. Now that Bruce is back, you can leave the brooding to him. It's not your style."

He grins a little sheepishly, but it feels strained. "I know, I know," he says, trying to keep his voice light. "I just need to—splash some water on my face. I'm fine."

He gets out of bed and drags on a pair of boxer shirts before making it to his bathroom. The light flickers on and glares at him, and Dick walks over to the basin and turns the faucet to warm. His mind is still half-wrapped up in his nightmare, though, still clinging to all the possibilities of how things might've gone down.

When she'd jettisoned his section of the ship, he'd been forced to watch the entire time from afar, counting down the seconds, and he'd been holding his breath waiting for the blast of Barbara's mothership. He kept imagining the final seconds of her life: her eyes closed, determined and stalwart to the last, before hours passed and he finally heard word from her at their scheduled backup rendezvous point. She'd saved herself, somehow. It would only be hours later, well after being reunited with her on solid ground, that he'd get the full story. In the meantime, they set the charges on the ship and finished what had been started.

At 15:06 EDT on January 3rd, 2017, the first mothership went down. It was an explosion three thousand miles off the coast of Nova Scotia, but Dick heard reports that the sight of the blaze had been seen from space. Five more explosions followed over the course of the day, all across the world – and Earthlings stood up as one and rejoiced as they bore witness to the beginning of the end of the Reach Invasion. The other teams miraculously came back without any losses sustained. They continued to fight for two days, three days, a week, drowning themselves in hard combat and close calls. Seven aching days ensued in which Dick and the others were locked in orchestrating a global battle to reclaim Earth against the Reach's remaining defenses.

And in the interim, the real truth about Aqualad and Artemis was revealed to everyone.

_It's a miracle,_ a Leaguer said to another, in an exchange Dick probably wasn't supposed to overhear, _that more didn't die. _

He kept sane for a week, playing superhero and defunct leader because someone needed to command, damn it, and then the impossible happened and luck finally turned in their favor: Batman and the other five missing League Members returned from outer space, this time with the Rimbor army at their backs. The Rimbor's grudge against the Reach managed to pave the way for an alliance, and where once Justice League members were seen as section-wide outlaws, now they'd forged the new bonds of friendship. The Rimbor army support tipped the balance in Earth's favor, and by the end of the eighth day, the Reach were waving the proverbial white flag.

All of it, from the first mothership to the final Reach stronghold over Earth cities, was over in less than a span of eight days.

The Invasion was _over._

"Hey," Babs says, softly, drawing his attention through the mirror. She's leaning against the bathroom doorframe, squinting against the florescent light. "So, I was thinking, actually, since I _did_manage to make it out of the mothership thanks to my awesome neophyte computer skills, I should probably try to develop that skill some more."

He turns around. "You wanna become like Oracle now?"

She flinches, a little. "Not—not the whole paralyzed part of it. Not if I can avoid that." She makes a face. "Not that I _can_avoid it—"'

"We will," he promises, firmly. "The future isn't set in stone, Babs."

She looks away briefly before steeling her eyes. "If it happens, Dick, then it happens. I won't let that define who I am or what I'm capable of. Like a wise guy once told me, there's only two types of people in the world. People who walk away when things get too hard, and people who don't. And after what we've been through the last year, the impossible odds we've overcome – I know now that you don't have to be able to walk to stand on your own. Whatever happens, _happens_. I'm not going to live my life in fear of the future."

A fond smile spreads across his face, because he loves it when she gets all idealistic on him, but in that hardnosed, no-nonsense type of way she has.

She scrubs a hand through her hair messily, then waves away the words with a flicker of her wrist. "Anyway—I don't know. Maybe Bart is right about one thing. The whole Oracle-kickass-hacker thing. I might be missing my calling. I mean, it _is_the only reason I made it out of that mothership alive."

Her hair is a bright, messy red halo around her, spooling in tangled curls at her shoulders. She's wearing a pair of boy-shorts and a small shirt with spaghetti straps, and one of the straps is falling down to reveal an enticing strip of bare shoulder. It's ridiculous how sexy she can look without even trying.

"Are you even paying attention to what I'm saying?" she questions, with an amused, knowing smile. "Or are your hormones getting in the way?"

"Hearing all of it, every word. I'm multitasking up here," he gestures towards his head. "There's always a thousand things going on in my mind."

"Does that mean I don't have your undivided attention?"

"Oh, no. Trust me, Barbara. You've got my _complete_ attention. A thousand things going on, and you are _every_single one of—"

"Hold your horses there, Hunk Wonder. I actually have to get going, anyway."

"What? Why? It's barely five in the morning."

"I've got things to do today, and I don't have any of my clothes here. Besides, I don't relish the idea of running into Bruce in the hallway after sneaking out of your bedroom."

"Like he's one to talk," Dick argues. "I saw Selina doing the walk of shame the other morning. Except, with her it isn't really a walk of shame. More like a march of shameless pride."

Barbara rolls her eyes. "Still, it's bad enough Alfred, Tim and Steph have seen me scurrying out of your room at one point or another. I'd like to say Bruce is oblivious about our new dynamic, but it's _Bruce_, so of course he knows. I'd just rather wait to have that conversation."

He lifts an eyebrow. "You're afraid he'll disapprove?"

She rolls her eyes. "No. This has nothing to do with disapproval or fear. But—Bruce is like a second father to me. Can you not comprehend why I don't want to run into him after having sex with you?" His face must betray what he thinks about that, because she sighs and walks over. "Hey," she says, reaching up, cupping the side of his face. Dick stays motionless as she rises up, eyes half-closed in anticipation. He feels the breath of a laugh against his cheek, and she pulls back. "Your bruises are fading, at least," she tells him, passing her thumb lightly over one of the discolored cuts near his eye. "You're starting to look a little rough around the edges."

"It's the mileage," he offers. "Saving the world is really not traught inducing."

Her mouth quirks up at one side, and she slides her hand back from his jaw to tug gently at his hair. Dick lets her pull his head down, unresisting, to rest his forehead against hers. "I _want _to stay," she says, ruefully, "But I really do have things to do. My dad needs someone to take care of him while he finishes his recovery."

Dick exhales noisily. "All right," because he can't argue with that one.

"All right," she repeats, and leans up to press her mouth against his, soft and warm and insistent. He brings one of his hands up to cup the back of her neck, pulling her closer to him with the other. She tastes like home and honey and exhaustion, her breath hitching in her throat, her fingers clutching at his forearms.

He takes his time with her mouth until Barbara starts to pull away, then lowers his attentions almost negligently down to her neck. Her pulse doesn't flutter any harder, and that frustrates him, and he sorta likes that she frustrates him. He's never been one to ignore a challenge. He only gets the reaction he's going for when he sucks a dark spot at the side of her throat, one that he'll swear under oath he doesn't do just to see if she'll makeup it away before she has to explain it to onlookers.

She makes a low sound in the back of her throat, groaning. "All right, all right," she murmurs. "Maybe I can stay another hour or so."

He's already walking her backwards toward the bedroom. Here the thing he'll never admit to anyone: Dick Grayson never plans for the future. It's too uncertain, too dangerous to hope for something when they have lives as chaotic as his own. It's a lesson he learned as a gawky little kid when he'd watched his parents die. It's something that's been reinforced everyday since. Some lives are bound up in secrets, in danger, in lies, and some lives are bound up in bloodshed. Dick's life is all of that, and more. But as terrible as it can be, there's also these rays of light: it's as brilliant as anything imaginable. They save civilians, fight the bad guys, slide from missions to superheroes against all odds, and it's both worse and better than having a normal life. But in that moment, despite his stalwart creed to never think about the future, he finds himself thinking: _I could get used to this for the rest of my life_.

The idea, strangely, doesn't frighten him at all.

* * *

fin.


End file.
